


The Way the Sun Burns

by andtheheir



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Character Death, Dom/sub, M/M, Multi, Other, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 03:32:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2094096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andtheheir/pseuds/andtheheir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin looked up, swallowed, and was very aware that he was not alone, even in the stillness around him. He could feel Levi there, could feel Levi warm and with his sharp teeth. “Something,” Levi said, his voice seeming closer, but Erwin hadn’t heard him move, “is wrong when the prince needs to hide from his own crown, don’t you think?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way the Sun Burns

**Author's Note:**

> A very special thank you to Sarah (sarahxsmile) for the inspiration for this work, for taking the time and effort to edit this ridiculous piece, and also for help with the title. 
> 
> Anyway, this was supposed to be a quick, short reward to myself for finishing my own piece, and it turned into a huge, 41,000 word mess! Enjoy!

A prince, they told him, was meant only to observe as he was not yet of the age or the status to contribute to political discussion. Erwin had been nine at the time, had raised his hand beneath the critical gaze of his father’s counsel and had simply asked why. But he wasn’t even supposed to be at the meeting—his father had brought him only because he had insisted, had declared that he needed to be as informed of the workings of the world as soon as possible so that he could, someday, be the best king possible. So Erwin folded his fingers in his lap, kept his posture straight against the wooden back of the large, adult-sized chair, and remained silent the rest of the meeting, though his obedience didn’t deter the judicious glances that fell his way, nor did it deter the way his father watched him with a small smile on his thin lips.

A prince, they told him, was always in the public eye and, therefore, should always act as such. Erwin had been ten, dressed in his new, white, button-down shirt and new, black pants, and had decided to run around the front courtyard with his closest friend Mike, and they ran around until they, somehow, ended up wrestling on the ground, rolling in the grass with their hands clawing at the other’s shirt, smearing dirt over the other’s cheek and into his hair, all the while laughing. Erwin spat a clod of dirt from his mouth. Then they had been called inside by Erwin’s mother, who was far more concerned about the stains caked to Erwin’s new shirt than about blood caked on Erwin’s busted lip (this was understandable, as Erwin couldn’t stop smiling and laughing at Mike, who stood beside him with a quiet smile.) Once Erwin had been cleaned up, his father’s counsel had treated him to a lecture.

A prince, they told him, would someday be expected to marry and produce an heir, just like his father. Erwin, prince of Stohess, had been twelve, and attended an afternoon luncheon in their neighboring country, Yalkell—Yalkell, another country of Sina, looked similar to his own, a country of seas of pastures and reefs of thick trees, a country of green and darker greens and blue and the bright colors of flowers in between. At this luncheon, in his first dress jacket—blue with gold accents—they introduced him to someone his age, someone with glasses and long, thick red hair, and large brown eyes. Hange, was their name, and Hange wore a long, pretty yellow dress, though it didn’t quite fit them, not with the way their fingers picked at its seams, bunching the bright fabric. Erwin and Hange talked cordially beneath the eyes of the adults mingling around, until they sneaked up the staircase to Hange’s room and Hange showed him their rock collection. When the time came to leave, Erwin could identify an agate, mica, and quartz.

A prince, his father told him, needed to be careful. Erwin had been thirteen when his father brought him through their back courtyard, and into the maze of trees that lined the gate of their property. Erwin’s father had brought with him a long, thin bag of leather that he carried over his shoulder until they had found a small clearing in the trees. He then dropped it onto the ground and opened it, pulling from it two sparring swords, broader and shorter than the fencing swords from Erwin’s lessons.

A prince, his father had said as he offered one of the swords to Erwin, who took it and balanced it in his fingers, was a target.

And a prince needed to learn this, his father had said and crossed the small clearing until he stood several feet from Erwin. The king then held the sword in front of him, its tip pointed towards Erwin as he bent his knees and readied his posture for an attack. Erwin held the sword’s coated handle tightly in his hand and did his best to mimic his father’s stance.

Because if the prince realized this when he was a king, his father had concluded just as the patter of raindrops sounded upon the canopy of leaves far above their heads, then it was too late.

Erwin’s father had lunged then, towards him, and Erwin had done the same, though the words, which he did not yet understand, held clumsily to him, tangling in his movements.

 

 

“A king,” Levi said from behind Erwin, from above him, with his voice a thick fog. His warm fingertips slid over Erwin’s neck, cupped around his throat. Erwin, with the back of his head rested against Levi’s hip, peered up at him. “On his knees.”

 

 

Erwin was never “allowed” to venture into town on his own, but by the time he was sixteen, he had mastered the art of sneaking from his chamber midday. He wore his plainest clothing when he went into town on his own, usually brown pants and a plain-colored shirt with a hood, which he placed casually atop his head before he reached the crowded, stone streets of the market. Of course, he never went into town unarmed—he had buckled a leather holster around his waist before he left, concealing a small blade inside it. Erwin had yet to feel threatened there, but he knew how quickly someone could force his hand.

Today, Mike met him on horseback just outside the bustling square. Mike, dressed much like Erwin, never wore his hood, saw no reason to. They left their horses in an outer stable—Erwin rode a brown, military horse instead of his own, as his, white and tall, would have drawn attention. They often went into town without real purpose except to browse through the merchant shops and enjoy the feeling of anonymity. Today, however, they had a motive for coming into town: Mike had heard hushed rumors on the streets of a working drug cartel that sold to the general public in broad daylight. Mike had told Erwin, had immediately caught Erwin’s interest, and here they were.

Erwin and Mike walked side by side, passing the vendors that lined the streets, vendors who shouted about sales, about new products, about the quality of their merchandise. They weaved through the crowds, the bodies around them too busy to spare them a second glance, to recognize just who they were. Erwin smiled to himself, taking comfort in it.

“What all did you hear about this?” Erwin asked in a conversationally quiet tone.

“It’s new,” Mike said.

“So it’s probably a vendor we haven’t seen before.”

“Mhmm. They’re on the South edge on the town, and apparently you have to really be looking for them. Whatever that means.”

They veered to the left. Erwin tipped his head back, pressed himself close to Mike to avoid running into a man carrying a few too many ceramic pots.

“What sort of drugs? Have you heard that much?” he asked and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants.

Mike shook his head, then sniffed. He paused, momentarily, before he answered, “No. I think I’m lucky I heard as much as I did. Maybe I’ll be able to smell them when we’re there.”

Erwin said no more. As they moved further away from the center of the city, the vendors became more and more scarce, spread out. The crowds thinned, too, and Erwin watched the sides of the streets, eyes on the merchants.

With every step he took, with every merchant that he had seen before, his heart beat quickened, excitement swelling inside him, though he truly didn’t know what he planned to do once they located the cartel. He had no intention of exposing them, he had no intention of buying anything from them—though, the more he thought about it, the more he considered that possibility. He may not have another chance to get ahold of anything like that again. But no, he just wanted to find them, find them for the sake of finding them.

He glanced over his shoulder, feeling like something was looming around them. All he found was the sun, high and bright in the sky, its heat insistent and seeping through the cloth of his shirt.

“Erwin,” Mike said beside him, and Erwin immediately stopped. Mike had stopped, too, in front of a shop that Erwin had never seen before. Positioned further back from the street than the surrounding vendors, the shop appeared to be selling fruit. Wooden crates were lined up in front of a wooden counter, positioned beneath a cloth canopy . A tall, brick building sat behind the stand, narrow alleys to either of its sides. A girl sat at the counter—about Erwin’s age—her red hair caught in two, low pig tails. She eyed Mike and Erwin when they stopped, but didn’t call out to them, didn’t try to sell them on the quality of the fruit, on the price. Instead, she grinned. In the shade of the canopy, her eyes sparked as she eyed Erwin, and Erwin’s pulse picked up again.

Erwin smiled in return and stepped forward. He crouched and picked a melon from the crate. He held it up and looked sideways at Mike, who sniffed, and then nodded very faintly.

“What can I get you boys?” the girl said and showed her teeth in her grin. She leaned forward, the collar of her button-down shirt dipping down her neck as she set her elbows upon the wooden counter. “Looking for anything special?”

“Yes, actually,” Erwin said casually and ducked to set the melon back in its crate. “Is this all of the fruit that you have?” He straightened again and gave her another smile. She knew who he was, no doubt with the way she watched him, the way she grinned at him.

She then laughed and slinked back from the counter. “Don’t like what you see? Is it not good enough for your taste?”

“Now, I wouldn’t say that,” Erwin said easily and tilted his head to the side. Beside him, he heard Mike sniff again. “But I’d like to see my options before I make any decisions.”

“Of course,” she said, and something in her voice set Erwin on edge, made him bristle, and he was again aware of the feeling of something looming around him. He glanced back again, just as she shouted, “Farlan! Watch the front, will you?” Again, he found nothing, nothing but passing patrons, nothing but the relentless sun. His blood rushed in his ears and he looked sideways at Mike, who was watching him with narrowed eyes—Mike sensed something, too.

“Follow me,” she said. A blond boy had joined her, and he watched Erwin and Mike as they stepped around the crates, around the counter, and followed the girl away from the road, towards the looming building; Erwin looked up its brick front as they approached, searched the windows quickly, though he found nothing, no one.

The girl led them past the building, in the small alley beside it. They followed her closely, Erwin watching her every movement, the casual and confident sway in her step, until her shoulders jerked and she turned on them immediately. She had drawn a knife as she turned, pointed it directly towards Erwin’s throat, but he, too, had drawn his blade from the scabbard at his side. Beside him, Mike had his hands hidden in his pockets, his eyes narrowed and never once leaving the girl.

“So they sent the heir to do their dirty work, hm?” the girl said, grinning and showing the excitement that Erwin felt in his pounding heart, in the rush of blood through his head. Mike looked to the side, then up, and Erwin watched him, briefly. He bent his knees in the slightest, ready.

He looked back towards the girl, the blade steady between his fingers. “No dirty work,” he said. “I’m here on my own accord.”

“Oh?” she said and cocked an eyebrow. Her stance was just as steady as Erwin’s. Erwin reached up with his free hand and carefully pushed his hood back, restoring his peripheral vision. “And what brings you here? Going to turn us into daddy? Win some brownie points?”

Again, Mike sniffed and Erwin felt it again, closer this time, something looming, something close. He didn’t look away from the girl. “No,” he said, quietly, as he listened, hearing only the now distant footsteps on the street, the even further shouts of merchants. “We heard word of a drug cartel in the market. We wanted to see it for ourselves.”

Erwin realized then that the girl in front of him was young—yes, he had noticed that she looked around his age, but he was only sixteen. The blond boy out front looked only slightly older. He swallowed thickly, impressed, though even more wary than before.

She laughed loudly, and Erwin bristled, his grip tightening on the blade in his hand.

Mike looked up.

Erwin heard nothing but the far away company of the town.

“Liar,” the girl snarled, and lunged towards him.

Erwin twisted sideways, throwing himself from the line of her direct attack. Mike moved, too, darting out of Erwin’s sight. He did, however, see the girl catch herself, the soles of her boots skidding across the gravel, and he realized then, a moment too late, that she hadn’t been looking to attack him, not with the blade. She ducked, abruptly took Erwin’s legs out from beneath him, and Erwin’s knees hit the ground hard.

Then, things were still, stiff, silent. The girl, now crouched in front of Erwin, grinned at him with her teeth—she was in front of Erwin, in plain sight, but there was someone behind him, someone he couldn’t see, but someone he could certainly feel, someone with a tight hold on his hair, someone holding a blade to his exposed throat.

His breathing had quickened in the excitement of the past moments—and they really were moments. From the corner of his eye, Erwin could see Mike, standing with an arm raised, his own blade extended towards whoever now stood behind Erwin.

When Erwin swallowed, the knife pressed his throat.

Carefully, he set his own blade down upon the ground. The person behind him kicked it towards the girl, who took it in her free hand. Erwin caught sight of the person’s dusty, black boots.

“Why are you really here?” she asked and stood, slowly drawing herself up so that she could look down upon Erwin. She twisted both of the blades between her fingers.

Erwin glanced up the tall walls on either side of the alleyway—as he did so, the fingers in his hair tightened and pulled, just enough to make him grit his teeth, just enough to make him aware of his pulse pounding through his body. He looked at the girl again, who tilted her head as she watched him. Standing at her full height, the looseness of her clothes over her body was apparent.

“An act of treason against the crown is punishable by immediate hanging,” Erwin said from between his teeth, his voice practiced and poised, though he felt anything but. The girl laughed again and the hand in his hair jerked, until the back of his head rested against the body behind him. Erwin swallowed hard and looked up, and saw that there was a boy behind him, a boy with dark hair, a boy dressed in a loose, white button-down. He didn’t look down at Erwin; he seemed to be focused upon the girl. A boy, as old as Erwin.

“It’s hilarious,” the girl said, laughing, but Erwin wasn’t watching her. He stared at the underside of the boy’s chin. “It’s hilarious the shit you can get away with if you’re of nobility. Your entire family should have been hanged by now for treason against your people.” Her voice thinned into a hiss and Erwin glanced down his cheeks, looking at her.

“Think so?” he asked, genuine curiosity tilting his voice, and he swallowed again.

The girl was no longer smiling. “Yes,” she said, without room for argument. And she looked as if she could say more, looked as if she wanted to, but the boy behind Erwin murmured a quiet, though pointed, “Isabel.” Instead, she glanced at him, briefly, and nodded, focusing again.

Erwin flexed his fingers at his sides, only then realizing that he had curled them into fists. He found himself tense all over, his jaw set, his toes curled in his boots, and he again looked up at the boy behind him. The rush of blood through his head had never been so loud.

“I’ll ask you one last time, prince,” Isabel said. “Why are you really here?”

“And I’ll tell you one last time,” Erwin said, finding Mike in the corner of his eye. Mike didn’t look away from the dark-haired boy behind Erwin, and Erwin again concentrated upon Isabel, who now held both blades still in her hands, her knuckles white around them. “We are here of our own accord. A drug cartel selling in broad day light isn’t exactly usual.”

Isabel narrowed her eyes, the line of her mouth thin. “Then you’re not looking hard enough,” she said.

“You’d be surprised at what people need to do to make ends meet under your rule,” she said.

“At what they need to do,” she added, “to stay alive.”

Erwin’s breath hitched as the blade tilted upon his throat, not yet pressing hard enough to cut his skin, but staying close enough for him to imagine what it would feel like if it did.

Erwin’s breath hitched and Mike moved, darting in Erwin’s peripheral vision, and the blade was then gone from his throat, the body was gone from behind him, leaving on the sharp, shallow sting of a knick on the side of his neck, his skin caught only by the very tip of the blade when it moved.

Erwin’s breath hitched and Isabel leapt forward, wielding both his blade and hers. Still on his knees, Erwin lashed out, caught the dark-haired boy’s legs, sent him to the ground with a grunt. Mike twisted out of the line of Isabel’s attack, held his free hand out, which Erwin immediately took. He held the side of his neck, feeling the warm blood pooling from the small cut on his skin, and the dark-haired boy was already up, his teeth bared, and his body abruptly against Erwin’s, shoving Erwin back into one of the brick walls. Erwin’s head hit the wall, and the body against him was small, but heavy, heavy and quick, and Erwin smashed his fist into the side of the boy’s face. The boy retaliated and his blade caught Erwin’s wrist in a hot and dizzying bite, and he looked at Erwin, his eyes narrow and ablaze, blood leaking from the corners of his thin, pale lips.

Erwin blinked, committed him to memory.

The boy’s weight was gone, Mike having shoved him from Erwin, and Erwin saw Isabel, crumpled and unconscious against the wall on the other side of the alley, only one blade caught loosely in her hands. Erwin snatched his own blade from Mike’s grip and sheathed it before they took off, sprinting down the alley and back towards the main street.

When Erwin looked behind him, he saw the boy, on his hands and knees, struggling to stand again.

Upon seeing Erwin and Levi, the blonde boy from the front—Farlan—quickly turned and rushed into the alley. Neither Erwin nor Mike looked back again, both of them breathless and upon shaking legs as they fell into the flow of the crowd on the street. Still, no one looked their way, and Erwin held his wrist in a tight grip, blood smearing against his palm as he did.

Only when they were near the edge of town, near the way from which they had come, did Erwin look at Mike, his pupils blown, his heart still pounding, and he laughed. He laughed, loudly, feeling entirely unstable and light and alive inside himself.

“We need to get you to the nurse,” Mike mumbled and shook his head.

Erwin laughed again, realized then that he hadn’t heard anyone speak the dark-haired boy’s name.

 

 

Levi sat, sturdy and still, upon his hips—sturdy, in spite of the way Erwin’s body shook with his heavy breathing. Around them, Erwin’s bed was large and pale, illuminated in the gaze of the moon through his window, his thin, white sheets wrinkled beneath him, and his thicker blankets bunched and crumpled, forgotten at the foot of his mattress. Levi sat, sturdy and still, looking much like the glow of the sheets, like the shadows in their folds with his dark hair and the dips over his body—his lips were parted, too, his breath escaping his mouth, audible, but his body didn’t move.

“For a king,” he said, and reached out, touching first the bruises upon Erwin’s ribs, and Erwin closed his eyes, let him, “you’re pretty beat up.”

Erwin swallowed, the sound loud in his ears, in the lazy air around them, and felt as Levi’s fingers drew shivering rivers up his chest, finding another mark just beneath his collarbone. He laid his arms at his sides, palms up, knew that Levi was far more bruised, far more scarred, than he was, but thin lighting of his room hid them all.

“Sparring,” Erwin breathed, his mouth dry and feeling clumsy around the familiar word.

“And,” he added, when Levi pushed his thumb against the scar on his exposed wrist—it had aged from red to pink to white, now too white to fit in with the rest of Erwin’s skin, “chasing after teenage drug cartels.”

He smiled in the corners of his lips, only briefly—when he opened his eyes an instant later, he found Levi staring down at him, his hair tousled over his forehead, and his lips had drawn together in a thin line.

“You’ve never been to battle?” Levi asked, quietly, so as to not disturb the stillness around them.

Erwin’s throat swelled—he couldn’t have spoken if he wanted to. He watched Levi, who had wrapped his fingers loosely around Erwin’s arm, who had covered the scar beneath his palm. Not yet, he wanted to say, he would eventually say when he could—not yet, but someday, because a king had no right to send his people to die if he himself was not willing to die with them. Not yet; he shook his head in the smallest of motions, and Levi nodded, understanding.

Then Levi opened his mouth, nearly said something more, but decided that it shouldn’t be said. He instead held tighter to Erwin’s wrist, his fingers locking around Erwin’s arm, and Erwin closed his eyes, waited for the ability to speak again.

 

 

Erwin attended the next council meeting with a bandage wrapped firmly around his wrist, hidden beneath the long sleeve of his dark shirt. The small pad taped to his throat, however, was plainly visible, too high to be concealed by the collar of his shirt. A sparring incident with Mike, he had explained with a shrug, though the narrow and skeptical eyes from all around the long, wooden table indicated that his story was not believed. Erwin couldn’t bring himself to care.

Remaining silent in his chair, still not yet of status or age to contribute to such meetings, Erwin relived his and Mike’s trip into town a couple days ago. He lingered first on Isabel’s words, the fact that most were struggling to simply stay alive in town. The councilman across from him spoke, his mouth moving, his voice loud as he pointed to a map of the town square, but Erwin couldn’t hear what he was saying.

He would be surprised, Isabel had said.

Then Erwin remembered the quiet threat of the blade against his throat, the promise in the way it tilted across his skin. He remembered the hand in his hair, the way the boy held him, the way they boy felt against him, unrelenting, dangerous, and the way he had looked at Erwin, with his eyes on fire, with his teeth bared. The way the boy had moved, faster than the blink of an eye.

“A revolt?” Erwin’s father said, from the head of the table, and Erwin looked up, his attention caught. “You think the people are planning a revolt?” There was no disbelief in his voice, no surprise. Behind his chair stood one of his knights, Arthur Zackarius, with his sword at his side and his hands clasped behind his back. He stood silent, merely an onlooker, and Erwin assumed that he had business with the king after the meeting, otherwise Erwin could see no other reason for his presence.

Erwin’s fingers were laced in his lap, his knuckles white.

“A quiet revolt,” the councilman across from Erwin, old and gray, said. “A crime revolt. Our guardsmen have heard words of drug cartels all through the city, and word of organized mobs. So far, we haven’t heard of any large plot against the crown.”

“Have we any intel on any motive for this?” the king asked and the councilman shook his head.

“None.”

Erwin’s fingers unlaced. He raised his hand, asking permission to speak, and the critical eyes fell upon him again. His father, however, nodded, and said, “Yes, Erwin?”

“Father, I think that the townspeople may be struggling in the living conditions we’ve given them, and that could serve as a motive for the rise in crime,” he said. He didn’t look at anyone but his father, didn’t dare, but he could feel the councilmen watching him, could feel the tension stiffen in the room.

The king raised an eyebrow. “Why do you think that?”

“I’ve gone into town a few times,” Erwin said. “I don’t know the details, but I’ve heard word that many people are struggling to make ends meet. It may be worth looking into, especially if it could calm the storm before it really starts.”

A brief silence settled, a chiding silence, telling Erwin what he knew, that he was not allowed into town without escort. Erwin sat straight in his seat, listened to it, heard what it had to say, until his father gave a stiff nod. “Very well, I, too, think this is worth looking into. We will more closely monitor the living conditions in town and make adjustments as necessary. Set this at high priority—our job is, after all, to serve the people. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” the councilman mumbled across from Erwin.

This time, no one told him that a prince was only meant to observe and, once the meeting adjourned, Erwin left the room among the council, his jaw set, his shoulders straight. Not one of them looked his way.

 

 

“Do you believe what she said?”

In the close heat of the afternoon, Mike didn’t respond right away. And perhaps Erwin should have asked this earlier, before he had talked to his father’s council, days ago.

The guard schedule had shifted, the first time since Erwin had first sneaked out a few years ago. He and Mike sat in the green grass of the courtyard, watched as the guards circled around the back wall of the castle. Surely they knew they were being watched—Mike and Erwin hadn’t bothered to hide themselves, instead finding it more comfortable to lean themselves up against two of the trees in the back yard—but the guards didn’t acknowledge them.

Mike inhaled deeply and remained quiet until the guards marched out of sight.

“I’ve thought about it,” he said, and Erwin watched the toes of his brown boots, his legs stretched out in front of him. His head was growing hot beneath the sun, high in the sky. “And I think I do. You and I never have to interact with parts of the town that we don’t want to—you and I can escape when we’ve decided we’ve had enough.”

An expectant pause, through which Erwin waited patiently. He stretched his arms out in front of them, held them parallel with his legs—the heat of the day had forced him to roll the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows. Now he stared at the bandage wrapped around his wrist. He didn’t need it any longer, but his father had insisted that he wear it until the wound was less noticeable, until it was more of a scar, until it was more of a memory instead of a reminder. Beside him, Mike eyed the bandage, too.

“Most people don’t have the luxury of being able to run away, like we do,” Mike said, quietly. “How could you and I know what they go through?”

Mike said, “Do we have any reason not to believe her?”

Erwin looked at him sideways and they fell into another silence, this one definitive. A pair of birds sang a loud conversation in the branches high above their heads. The breeze hushed them, sweeping through the leaves of the trees, past Mike and Erwin, and Erwin closed his eyes, turned his head, breathed it in.

They had gone into town, gone after the cartel, nearly a week ago—it had, unlike the cut on Erwin’s arm, become only a memory. He had stopped wearing a bandage on his neck days ago. And most of the incident seemed distant, far removed—after all, how could he and Mike know what they go through?—most, except for the dark-haired boy. Erwin felt just as close to the boy as he had in that alleyway, with his body pinned between him and the wall.

Behind his eyes, Erwin saw him. Saw him from below, the bottom of his chin, and saw him close, their noses nearly touching, the brightness of his eyes.

And when Erwin swallowed, he could nearly feel the blade against his throat, its dangerous complacency (the more Erwin had thought about it in the days that followed, the more he realized how casual it had felt there, against his neck, as if it belonged there, as if it was meant to be there, but that, too, had become a memory, and he knew that memories could be deceiving).

“We don’t,” Erwin said and opened his eyes again, only to squint, the sun seeming to have moved closer.

 

 

In the thick of the trees, Erwin ducked, dodged his father’s attack, and swept to the side, catching his father’s legs, taking them from beneath him. His father fell to his knees and Erwin stood, his sparring sword drawn towards his father’s throat. The night around them watched, quiet, and their heavy breathing puffed in clouds before their lips.

“Where’d you learn that one?” Erwin’s father said and stared up at Erwin, pale in the spots of moonlight that seeped through the leaves above them.

Erwin tilted his head to the side. A pink scar sat upon his skin: a reminder.

“Sparring incident,” Erwin breathed. He swallowed, his throat swollen and dry from the activity.

Carefully, his father set the sword upon the grass. He leaned back and Erwin withdrew, lowering the sword to his side. Erwin watched his father stand, listened as he said, “The council has been monitoring the town closely ever since our last meeting. Thus far, they have nothing to report, no sign of communal struggle.”

He paused and stood. Erwin gritted his teeth. “So I’d like to know why you are so certain that there is need for our help.”

Erwin waited, to see if his father would say more, but he was silent, just as the air around them. His father stood still, leaving his sparring sword in the grass, and waited patiently, and Erwin couldn’t see his eyes, but he could feel them, fixed and focused upon him. Erwin stood, tense in the silence, before he exhaled and lifted his blade, ran his fingertips over its flat sides. Erwin told his father of the south side drug cartel, of their age, of Farlan, of Isabel and her words, of the dark-haired boy and his swiftness, of his danger—though not of the effect of his danger on Erwin, not of Erwin’s racing pulse or of the way Erwin had found it difficult to forget him.

Once Erwin finished speaking, a stillness fell between them again. Their breathing had steadied, his father’s sword still laying up on the ground and his still held loosely at his side.

“You could have been killed,” the king said after a long moment. “People like that, your age or not, are dangerous.”

“’People like that’? Do you mean our townspeople? Why do you think they’re like ‘that’, father, we’ve made them like ‘that’.”

“They will kill you,” Erwin’s father said, firmly, and Erwin looked up, the leaves black above him. “Without hesitation. There is a reason that you are not to go into the town without an escort. You will refrain from going into town again on your own—Mike does not count as an escort. Understood?”

A prince, after all, is a target.

“Yes, sir,” Erwin said stiffly, though he did understand. He didn’t want to, but he did.

“That being said,” Erwin’s father continued, quieter, “you should know that, just this afternoon, our guardsmen incarcerated a teenage boy from the south side for distributing illegal substances to other citizens.”

The chill of the night made its way into Erwin’s skin. He tilted his head back down, eyed his father.

“Because he is not yet an adult, his sentencing is up for debate—his trial will be held tomorrow morning, in the high court,” his father said.

“The king’s council,” his father said, “is arguing for hanging.”

The cold, stiff and heavy inside him, held Erwin breathless. And he remembered, once more, the dark-haired boy, small and quick, with blood red in the corner of his lips.

“What will you do about it?” Erwin asked, quietly, so as to not disturb the air around them, and his father crouched to pick up his sword. Erwin’s fingers tightened around his own.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said, and lifted his sword, pointed it towards Erwin.

 

 

Erwin felt heavy upon the ground. His limbs shook, dirt smeared over his palms and his knees from the number of times that he had fallen, the number of times that he had tried to catch himself. Blood rushed through his head in loud waves, crashing against his skull, pounding, and his throat scratched with every breath he drew in. His hair hung wet, plastered against his forehead, over his ears, and the ground beneath him was dark in the night—he blinked to make sure that he was seeing correctly.

“Get up, Erwin,” his father said from above him. Erwin saw the toes of his boots and he swallowed thickly, cringing with the motion. This was their third sparring session.

He did as he was told. He grit his teeth and pushed himself up, bent his legs beneath him and set his feet firmly upon the ground, stood, looked up at his father. The practice blade in his hand was heavy and he held it, tightly.

“Try again,” his father said, quiet but firm, and stepped back, crossing to the other side of the clearing. Erwin nodded, lifted his sword, ignored the shaking of his arms, and braced himself.

This would be the seventh time he had tried. His father, it seemed, had learned his steps, dodging or deflecting each hit, retaliating in the spots that Erwin left open. Erwin’s steps had come directly from his fencing lessons, and elegant and precise though they may be, Erwin was quickly learning that they should only serve as a base for his movements, that he needed to be less predictable, less reserved.

As always, his father granted him the first move. Erwin took a moment to collect himself, to steady himself, to forget his exhaustion, before he ran towards his father, blade poised, his mind racing with his heart. At thirteen, he was smaller than his father, much smaller, so he knew, had known, to rely mostly on his speed, and he twisted, quickly, just as he reached his father, dripping his blade to catch his father’s side. Deflected, easily, and Erwin used his father’s weight to push himself back, twist and try for his other side. Deflected, easier.

“You have the technique,” he heard, his father’s voice calm and all around him as he moved, trying to find a weakness, “the skill. Your steps are perfect, Erwin, but someone who is trying to kill you will not be.”

Erwin grit his teeth and leaped back to avoid the swing of his father’s attack. He took a moment, staring through the night at the shape of his father, and he ground his toe into the grass, lunged forward again.

“Be creative.”

Erwin’s breathing came heavy from between his teeth and he caught his father’s blow, his arms shaking against his father’s strength, and he swiftly turned, the slide of the sparring blades loud in the quiet night.

“Think, be at least ten steps ahead.”

His father stepped forward, Erwin stepped back.

“You’re too reserved, Erwin, be reckless, be unafraid, be willing to sacrifice everything.” Louder, lingering, as if the trees around them had caught the words and held them captive.

This time, his father stepped forward, and Erwin did too, his angling his sword in front of him to, once more, catch his father’s attack. His arms gave, his elbows bent and his father surged forward, breaking his defense, and he fell to the ground, the practice sword gone from his hand and several steps away. Frustration was hot inside him, hot and trembling, and he was ready to go for his sword, ready to try again, but his father’s sparring blade was close, at his throat, and he didn’t dare move.

“Good,” his father said quietly, and Erwin stared up at him. The moonlight caught the edges of his jaw, select strands of light hair, but nothing of his face. “Good, you’re learning. I think that’s enough for the night.”

The words doused through Erwin and he swallowed, nodded, realized he hadn’t been breathing. His father withdrew his blade and Erwin closed his eyes, laid back in the cool grass, finding it pleasant against his hot, overworked skin and through his thin clothing. His father let him have the moment to collect himself and what he had learned. Eventually, his breathing slowed, his head quieted, and he felt as if he were floating in the idle night.

“Do you know why we’re doing this?”

Erwin opened his eyes, his father’s voice closer than he would have expected—his father had sat beside him. Now the edges of his face were caught in highlight, outlining him against the black trees. The question didn’t ask for an answer, so Erwin remained silent.

His father didn’t look at him. He stared forward, across the clearing. “A prince, a king, needs to be able to fight. He will expect others to fight for him, to die for him, so he must be willing to do the same. He must be willing to not only send his people to war, but to lead them there.”

“A king’s duty, above all else,” his father said, “is to serve his people.”

Erwin closed his eyes, exhaled, and he felt a large, warm, and familiar hand touch his forehead, push his hair off of his damp skin.

 

 

The trial was held just after dawn. Mike met Erwin outside the guarded courtroom door. They met without a word and the guards stepped aside upon seeing Erwin and the pair of them found seats among the common benches in gallery, near the front. The dark-haired boy had already been led before the council, now standing with chains between his wrists and ankles. He stood, his back to them, before the towering, wooden podiums of the king’s council, beneath the intricate designs carved into the court room’s ceiling. He stood in silence, with his shoulders straight. No one around Erwin recognized him; no one seemed to care.

The king sat to the right of the council, high in his balcony, his fingers laced together in his lap. His eyes caught Erwin’s.

The councilman positioned in the center, old and gray, at the highest part of the podium, called the court to order, instigated the sentencing trial for convicted illegal substance dealer Levi Ackerman.

Levi. Erwin moved his mouth around the name, felt its shape on his tongue and lips.

The usual sentence for such a crime would be execution by hanging, the councilman explained, but, due to the convicted’s age, the crown has requested reconsideration for something less severe. And, rest assured, the council has discussed at length the factors contributing to this sentence. In this discussion, they had found some records of violence in the convicted’s reported past, in addition to acts of theft, beginning when the convicted was only of age six.

Erwin, once more, found his fingers laced tightly in his lap, the tendons protruding from the backs of his hands.

The council called for any objections or defense from the convicted: he had none, none that he spoke.

Very well. The council has carefully and meticulously deliberated upon these factors and unanimously agreed that hanging would be the only just sentence for this crime.

Erwin’s insides knotted.

The convicted has showed a history of criminal activity; it would be in the town’s best interest to eradicate this problem before much else came of it.

Erwin’s pulse rose, his teeth ground together.

The hanging would be scheduled for two days from now, at precisely noon, in the town square.

Erwin leaned forward upon the bench. Mike watched him sideways.

Objections?

Slowly, Erwin rose his hand. Normally ignored, no councilman looked towards the common gallery, so he rose from the bench. He stood tall, his hand still raised, and eyes looked his way from all around him, eyes looked his way and recognized him. The councilmen looked his way, but none said anything—they merely waited, with their unfavorable stares.

What did he plan to do about this?

Levi looked over his shoulder, his dark eyes catching Erwin’s.

“Yes, sir,” Erwin said to the councilman, his head high, “I have an objection.”

“Sire,” the councilman said with tension in his voice, “I had no idea that you were here. This is the king’s court; I’m afraid that your word has no authority here—”

“As the son of the king, the heir to the throne, you will hear my objection,” Erwin demanded, his voice finite and crisp, disturbing the air of the court room like a stone through glass water.

The councilman bristled, but said no more. Erwin slipped past Mike, past the townspeople, out of the bench, and into the large aisle that separated the two halves of the common gallery. Now, the entire court room watched him. Watched as he moved down the aisle, the click of his boots over the stone floor the only sound in the breathless room.

Inside him, Erwin’s heart was loud, chaotic.

Just what did he plan to do about this?

He moved past Levi and stood directly in front of the council’s podium, tilted his head back to look up at them directly. They stared down upon him, held in silence, and Erwin realized then how little authority they held over him. He had told them to listen, and they were listening. Behind them hung a large red cloth, embroidered with the serpent crest of the royal family.

Erwin looked up, past the council, and saw that his father was watching him, too.

“I wish to make Levi Ackerman my knight,” he said and, above him, his father leaned further back in his chair. Erwin looked again at the councilman, whose eyes had widened with surprise. His mouth had twisted into a snarl. Behind him, Erwin felt the gallery stiffen.

“Don’t be absurd,” the councilman said. “Knighthood if something to be earned, not given. This boy is a criminal, a criminal worthy of being hanged—you will not pollute the noble line with such filth—”

“He has earned his knighthood,” Erwin returned, calmly, firmly. “I have seen him fight, and I would like him at my side.”

“He is a _criminal_ —”

“He has done what he needs to do to stay alive. There is no crime in that. As this kingdom’s heir, as a member of the royal family, I will promote him to knighthood, as long as his highness does not have any objections.” Silence again fell heavily across the court room; Erwin looked up once more, at his father. The council did the same, all of their heads turning towards the king, who sat calmly in his balcony, who stared down at Erwin, who hadn’t looked away from his son from the moment he had spotted him in the gallery.

“I have none,” the king said, calmly, another stone through water.

Eyes were once more upon Erwin. He stared up at his father only for a moment longer before he turned his back on the council and faced Levi.

Levi stood as tall as he had before, his jaw tense, his eyes dark as he watched Erwin, quiet in their anger. The shock that had rippled through the courtroom had not reached him. Erwin approached him slowly, blood again rushing through him, and he remembered, with each step he took, how Levi’s hand had felt in his hair, tight and pulling, pulling until his head had rested against Levi’s hip. He remembered the way Levi looked above him, tall, remembered, hadn’t been able to forget.

Erwin stood several inches taller than Levi. He stopped in front of him, stared down at him, and he could see the clarity of Levi’s eyes, the way they burned, the way they fought.

“Please kneel,” Erwin said, quietly, just loud enough for Levi to hear.

Levi didn’t. He instead stared up at Erwin, his cuffed hands balled into fists in front of him, and Erwin waited, the courtroom and the council and the king waited, waited until Erwin was sure that Levi would rather die. Levi stood stiff, unrelenting, and he eyed Erwin like he had that day, when he had Erwin pinned against the wall, like he had when he had every intention to kill him, and Erwin realized then that Levi would not kneel, that Levi would rather die than kneel.

Erwin realized this, but as he opened his mouth to say more, Levi sank, slowly, tautly, to one knee. The chains around his ankles chattered as he moved, loud and breaking the silence that into which the courtroom had settled. Erwin’s breath stopped short, his mouth still open, but he forgot what he had planned to say. Levi knelt in front of him, but his eyes said that he was not on his knees, that he was instead standing very tall, and Erwin closed his mouth.

The guards of the courtroom had their swords at their sides; Erwin did not. He instead had his concealed blade, tucked in the holster at his side, and he slipped his fingers beneath his shirt, withdrew it. Behind him, he heard a councilmember murmur, something about disgrace, and Erwin held the blade at his side. He swallowed, clearing his throat, and tipped his head back, staring down his cheeks at Levi and, when he spoke, his voice was loud and straight lines, unlike the knots inside of him.

“Do you, Levi Ackerman, hence forth pledge your life, your body, your mind, to my crown and to the betterment of the lives of those living beneath it?”

Erwin remembered the quiet murmur of Levi’s voice—the way that he had said Isabel’s name.

“I do,” Levi said, just as quietly, as if Erwin was the only one meant to hear the words.

Around them, the courtroom sat stagnant.

Erwin reached forward, laid the flat side of his blade over Levi’s left shoulder. “As the foremost heir to the throne, I hereby promote you to Sir Levi Ackerman—” He slowly lifted the blade, set it gently upon Levi’s right shoulder, and Levi watched him, never once looked away from him. “—first knight of I, Prince Erwin Smith. Please rise.”

Erwin stepped back, his fingers tight around the blade that he held at his side. Levi did, the chains loud around his ankles as he stood again.

The council would not be able to sentence a knight to death. Wordlessly, a guard moved and unlocked the cuffs around Levi’s wrists, around his ankles, and Erwin watched, the courtroom and the council and the king watched. Once free, Levi stood still, waiting—Erwin had nearly expected him to run, had expected him to fight like he had in the alleyway. But he didn’t. He stood still, watched Erwin, waited, and Erwin, somehow, felt warmer in his clothes, felt charged in his skin. He sheathed the blade once more and, behind him, the councilman, old and gray, said, “The charges against the convicted have been waived and the sentencing revoked. Court dismissed.”

But no one stood. No one stood until Erwin, with Levi at his side, stepped back down the length of the aisle, with eyes following them, all of them recognizing them.

 

 

Erwin stood in front of the large window and his small hands left prints across the windowpane.

“Erwin, honey,” his mother said from behind him and she gingerly touched his wrists, her long, thin fingers easily encircling his arms, “don’t touch the glass.”

“But I can’t see,” he said and tipped his head back, stared up at her. She reached down and gently brushed his blond hair from his forehead—she stood tall above him, but the library ceiling, lined with dark, horizontal columns, stood even taller above her.

“I’ll fix that,” she said, and stepped back. Erwin looked forward again, through the window. It was gray and dark and wet outside, at barely a thirty minutes past dawn. The light behind him extinguished, his mother having blown out the library lanterns, and outside was still gray and wet, but a bit lighter, so that Erwin could now see the grass in the front court of their yard, the trees that lined the gate, and, if he squinted, he could even make out the gate. All while keeping his hands at his sides. “Better?”

“Yes,” he said, “thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” His mother knelt beside him, her dress folding around her legs as she did, but he didn’t look at her.

“When is he supposed to be home?” Erwin asked quietly. He felt his mother run her fingers over the back of his head, flattening his hair.

“Any moment now. He said early today,” she answered calmly, without worry, without doubt. So Erwin didn’t feel worry, either, he didn’t feel doubt. “Have you eaten?”

“I’m not hungry.”

His mother took his forearm into her hand and lifted it, turned it so that his palm faced upwards. He looked at her, and watched as she rubbed her fingertips over the fading bruise that Mike had given him on his wrist when they were wrestling in the yard. “Mike’s pretty strong, isn’t he?” she asked and smiled at Erwin.

“He is,” Erwin said, watching her fingers, entranced by the way they moved slowly, leisurely over his white skin. “He’s stronger than I am.”

“For now,” she said.

Erwin smiled and she smiled, too. “For now,” he agreed.

Distantly, through the gray, they heard the low toll of the town bell. Erwin perked up, pulled his arm from his mother’s hold, and again set his hands against the glass, leaning closer to the window until his nose touched it, too. His mother didn’t say anything this time. They both sat silent in the tall, dark room, waiting, until finally, minutes after the bell’s warning, the gate shifted in the distance. Erwin tipped his head forward and pushed his forehead against the glass and watched as large shadows slowly appeared through the gray and the wet, shapes of men on horses trotting through the gate, along the path in the courtyard. Several veered off to go around the house, towards the back stable, but several more stopped, close to the front door, and Erwin watched as figures dismounted, as they gathered around another horse, the first horse that had come through the gate—

“Erwin, stay here, I’ll be back,” his mother said beside him, her voice breathless, and she was gone, her the fabric of her dress rustling around her movements as she left the room.

Erwin’s insides felt tight, felt that something was wrong. The figures helped the first horse rider dismount, and they went, slowly and as a crowd, towards the front door. Behind them, horses and soldiers continued to flood in through the gate, bending along the path to go around back. Erwin pushed himself from the window, stood quickly, and left the room, his small legs clumsy in their quickness.

Downstairs, he found soldiers, their coats and hair soaked through, supporting his father as they moved through the foyer. Erwin kept to the steps, remaining out of the way, and he watched as his mother met his father, stopping in front of him and touching his face, his rain-wet jaw, and he couldn’t hear what she was saying, not until her head turned to ask one of the soldiers, “What happened?”

“Blade to the side, at the very end of the battle,” the soldier said, his voice rough, hoarse, and he was the only one acknowledged Erwin on the steps.

“He’ll be okay,” another said. “It’s shallow.”

Erwin’s mother pushed her fingers through the king’s tangled hair, once, before she motioned for the soldiers to leave, taking their place at the king’s side, and supporting him. “Thank you,” she said, her voice shaking, “thank you, I can take him from here.” And she left the soldiers standing near the door as she led Erwin’s father down the hall, into the infirmary.

 

 

Erwin relented.

The crack of the riding crop was sharp through the stillness of his quarters, sharp through the clouds in his mind and through the beads of sweat standing upon his back—sharp through the quick rhythm of his breathing, causing a hitch. The rope around his wrists was tight, keeping his arms stretched above him and anchored to the post of his bed, and he clawed at the wood, etching lines in the decorative notches that have been apparently untouched by all kings before him. His body had tensed through the pain, but after only moments, it relented, he relented, and his shoulders caved, his body feeling heavy upon his knees.

Another crack and it happened again—he stiffened, the pain bright outside of him and inside of him, before he relaxed, shaking and floating (sinking?) in the quiet darkness that followed. Then gloved fingers pushed through his hair, familiar fingers, pulling him along the shadows into which he had nestled, and the fingers moved languidly along his scalp, thoroughly, so Erwin could feel the notches of their knuckles, not unlike the notches on the bed post. Erwin groaned, and held tightly to the bedpost, resting his forehead against its wood.

He closed his eyes against the blindfold and relented.

“Your highness,” Levi’s voice was all around him, close, and Erwin swore he felt the words all over his skin, “you’re shaking.”

Erwin couldn’t tell. He licked his lips and they were salty and wet and Erwin’s hands jerked with the desire to reach out and touch Levi.

Levi’s gloved hand touched his cheek, touched his lips, and Erwin licked his fingertips. The leather was smooth over his tongue, smooth and smoky, musky and unpleasant. Erwin spread his naked legs, his cock hard, and Levi smeared his fingers over Erwin’s lips, wetting them with his saliva. Levi then pushed two of his fingers into Erwin’s mouth—Erwin slackened his jaw and took them in, eagerly, pushing his tongue against them as they moved and twisted in his mouth. Erwin shuddered as he felt the head of the horse crop trailing down his spine, a soft but demanding touch, and he shuddered and rolled his shoulders back, setting himself into as straight as posture as he could manage. Levi felt close and warm behind him, Erwin could feel the whispering brush of his clothes over his shoulders and back.

The head of the crop reached his hip, where it paused, then slipped itself over his thigh, coaxing his legs further apart. It traced down his inner thigh, making him shudder, and he could feel Levi’s breath over his ear, then he felt Levi’s lips on his ear—first his lips, then his teeth, sharp, just as biting as the crop had been upon his back. Erwin gasped. The crop touched his cock and his hips jumped.

Levi’s breath was once more against his ear, and Erwin imagined him watching the crop move over his cock, watching the way Erwin trembled, watching the way he couldn’t quite sit still.

Erwin’s head was weightless, dark, and Levi’s hand, once in his hair and once upon his lips, moved to his neck, enveloping his throat, and Erwin exhaled a shuddering breath, leaned back into Levi. He felt his pulse knock against Levi’s hand in a quick, heavy rhythm, and the head of the crop smoothed up and down his cock in whispering and unfulfilling touches. Erwin’s fingers shook as he wrapped them tight around the bedpost, the tendons protruding from the backs of his hands, his knuckles white. His hips jerked, trying to find more, anything more.

Perhaps he made another sound because Levi cooed in his ear, a quiet and close, “Shh,” and Erwin felt lost, unsure of where exactly he was, when he was—all he knew was he was with Levi and Levi was all around him, holding him, protecting him. He tipped his head sideways and rested his head against Levi’s. Levi bit again on the cuff of Erwin’s ear and ran the crop in slow, maddening strokes over Erwin’s cock, until Erwin’s shoulders caved forward, towards the bed, and his head hung.

Levi withdrew. The sweat over Erwin’s hot skin chilled and he shuddered, couldn’t quite find it in himself to fix his posture, to make a sound. He swam inside himself, inside his wired body, and, when the crop bit into his back, he hardly reacted. The pain was sharp inside him, a brief certainty in the mess Levi had made of him, but his body remained lax, defeated. The crop’s sting simmered and fizzled until it, too, became undeterminable, forgotten.

And just as Erwin felt as if he had perhaps fallen comatose, Levi’s warm, bare fingers wrapped around his cock. A groan dripped from his lips and Levi’s forehead pushed against the side of his head. Levi stroked him in long, thorough motions, and Erwin knew that Levi was watching him. Levi’s other hand, still gloved, wrapped around the back of Erwin’s neck, held him tightly, made him remember himself.

The pace of Levi’s hand grew progressively faster, working Erwin’s cock, and Erwin came before long. His orgasm stirred inside him, and he forgot again, for one last moment.

He slumped sideways, towards Levi, his hands anchored to the bedpost, Levi’s hand anchored to the back of his neck. His breathing was harsh and rough in his dry mouth, his body shaking and tingling and Levi held him, didn’t move to untie him or remove the blindfold or tend to his back until he calmed, until he was put back together.

 

 

“What happened to Isabel and Farlan?”

Select knights had their own quarters in the castle. Levi did not, as his knighthood had not been planned and had barely had a proper ceremony. So he slept in Erwin’s large bed, on its very edge, as far away from Erwin as he could manage. He had very few belongings, as he had been a man sentenced to death, but Erwin had made room for him in his closet anyway, for the clothes that he had and the clothes that he had accumulated upon his promotion to knighthood.

Erwin didn’t mind living with Levi in such close proximity—just the opposite, in fact, despite the fact that Levi refused to engage conversation—though he had, for the first couple of nights, not been able to sleep for fear that Levi would murder him in his bed.

But nights passed, mornings and days passed, and Levi hadn’t touched him, hadn’t tried to. He hadn’t tried to escape, hadn’t tried to harm anyone in the castle, not even the councilmen, who blatantly ignored him whenever he was around, to the point where even Erwin felt offended.

“I know there’s a reason that you haven’t tried to escape, or haven’t tried to kill me,” Erwin said, laying upon his bed, his back to Levi. He stared at the sheer curtains that covered his window, the blue glow of the night muted beneath them. “I don’t know you very well, but I can’t think of any other reason except them.”

Only silence answered him. Erwin exhaled slowly and closed his eyes, the pillow uncomfortable beneath his head. He shifted, rearranging it, before he settled again, though briefly. He turned his head and peered at Levi from the corner of his eye. Levi was lying with his back to him, tense and distant and on the opposite side of the bed, nearly blended with the shadows of the room. Erwin turned back and closed his eyes again.

“I’m not stupid enough to do something I know I wouldn’t get away with.” The words pulled Erwin from the daze in which he had settled, drew him awake and he opened his eyes. Levi’s voice had been quiet, much like before, though biting, threatening and Erwin remembered the way Levi had bared his teeth that day in the alley.

“Would you kill me if you knew you could get away with it?” Erwin asked, his voice groggy, still floating in the space between awake and asleep.

Levi was silent again. Erwin turned onto his back, the covers thick and reluctant to move on top of him. He set his hands upon his stomach and turned his head to watch Levi, who hadn’t moved.

“I wouldn’t kill you first,” Levi said. Levi was so still that Erwin had trouble believing that he had spoken.

“They got away,” Levi finally answered, perhaps after minutes, but Erwin had been busy trying to find the shape of Levi’s body in the darkness around them. Levi’s voice left no room for further conversation.

 

 

Erwin sat outside the infirmary door, his back curved against the opposite wall. His knees were drawn to his chest, the stone floor of the corridor cool beneath his shorts. He had watched his father’s footsteps, rain-wet and heavy upon the floor after he had first entered the infirmary, dry until they were hardly there. Many people had passed him, even a councilman had opened the door and went into the infirmary, but none of them had yet to acknowledge him. He wrapped his arms around his knees and leaned his head back against the cold wall, waiting.

“The war is not yet over,” someone said from inside, someone who was not Erwin’s mother, who was not Erwin’s father. “We are close, your highness, but we need support on the front lines, our soldiers need us—”

“He will not go back to fight.” Erwin’s mother, loudly, firmly, and Erwin cleared his throat quietly. “I know his wound is not fatal, but he is in no condition to fight.”

“Then we will lose this war,” someone said. “Our soldiers pride themselves in a king that will fight alongside them, if he is not there—”

“His soldiers know what has happened, yes?” Again, Erwin’s mother, with such stability. “I’m sure they will understand why he is not with them.”

“Your Majesty, you misunderstand—”

“Then I will take his place,” she said.

“I will go and fight in his place,” she said.

She said, “Our soldiers will have the crown at their side, now leave us.”

A murmur, a low vibration from behind the door that Erwin could not hear.

“I am the queen and I have made my decision. You are dismissed.” His mother’s voice was now quieter, quiet and he had to strain to hear her, calm but thin. Moments later, the door clicked open, creaked as the councilman left. He looked down at Erwin, briefly, wordlessly, before he closed the door behind him and went down the corridor. Erwin stared at the black doorknob and listened to the click of his footsteps, fading and fading and dry, until he couldn’t hear them any longer.

 

 

The bandage was gone from Erwin’s arm: a memory.

“With our increased presence in the town, we still have no evidence of notable hardship in the lives of our people,” said the councilman, several seats down from Erwin. Erwin stared down at the dark wood of the table, the darker lines that twisted and curved in its surface, and he had rolled his sleeve up to his elbow, absently thumbing the quiet scar upon his arm.

“You’re certain of this?” his father said, from the head of the council table. There was no knight behind him today. “You’re certain that our presence there isn’t influencing their behavior and perhaps intimidating them into silence?”

Erwin listened to the pause that followed. He felt strangely alone, strangely isolated while nestled among the company of his father’s council.

“I suppose I can’t be certain of that, no,” the councilman said, reluctantly. “But I’m not sure there’s any way to remedy the influence of our presence in town. You asked us to monitor activity, and we are doing so. The most difficulty we’ve met in the common district is the resistance of the illegal substance dealer who now resides in knighthood.”

Erwin looked up at that, knowing that he had just been indirectly summoned to the conversation. He said nothing, instead sat with his back straight against the chair, his jaw set, his eyes focused upon the councilman who had just spoken from down the table. The other members of the council watched him, he felt them, the severity of their gaze something all too familiar, and Erwin wrapped his fingers around his arm, covered his scar with his palm.

“And that issue has been resolved,” his father said, his voice mimicking the rigidity of Erwin’s spine.

“Indeed,” the councilman said, his eyes focused upon Erwin’s, dangerous. “That being said, tensions within the countries of Rose have heightened, specifically Trost.” He looked away, leaving Erwin, once more, alone in his chair.

Levi was waiting outside the council hall, caught beneath the gaze of the guards who stood just outside the hall doors. He had leaned himself against the stone wall, beneath the orange glow of a flickering lantern, which left shapes of deep shadows over his hair, across his nose, his cheek, his shoulders, his arms, crossed over his chest. His overcoat, thick and of a blood color, was the most recent article of clothing that Erwin had added to Levi’s side of his closet, and the gold trim over the cuffs of the sleeves and the lapel seemed bright in the dim corridor. The boots he wore were the same boots that he had worn when Erwin first met him—then dusty, now shined clean.

The councilmen and the king passed Levi without acknowledgement. Erwin followed them out of the meeting hall and stopped in front of Levi, who didn’t bother moving. He watched Erwin, the skin under his eyes dark and Erwin wasn’t sure if it was the lighting or if his skin was bruised with exhaustion. The fall of footsteps slowly faded down the hallway, leaving Levi and Erwin in the watchful company of the guards.

“Sorry,” Erwin said quietly and rolled his sleeves back down his arms. “They still don’t trust you enough to let you sit in.”

“They never will,” Levi said shortly and pushed his weight from the wall. Erwin couldn’t disagree. He opened his mouth, the council’s discussions heavy in his mind, but he stopped beneath the guards’ watch. Levi waited patiently, the line of his lips thin, and Erwin turned, his steps loud and lingering in the corridor as he walked in the direction opposite his father and the council. He heard the click of Levi’s boots follow him at a quicker pace.

Erwin realized that he didn’t feel so alone, then.

The night outside was dark, the sky thick and clouded with the threat of rain. Gravel crunched and shifted beneath the soles of their boots and Erwin fell back, walking beside Levi, who stared straight ahead, straight down the path they walked upon. And Erwin wondered if Levi would run, wondered if Levi would think to run. He remembered Levi, quick and heavy, in the alley and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to catch him if he did, knew that the guards were too distant.

But Levi didn’t run. He remained silent and at Erwin’s side, even when they stepped off of the path and into the grass, their steps now only the quiet hiss of the grass bending around their feet. Levi didn’t run, not when Erwin led them through the trees that he had grown to memorize by now, through which he could maneuver in the most stubborn of nights. He didn’t run, not even when Erwin led them into the small clearing that his father had showed him years ago.

Then Erwin thought, fleetingly, perhaps Levi planned to kill him.

“The other night,” he said and stood in the center of the clearing, facing the shape of Levi among the black trees, “you said that, if you could get away with it, you wouldn’t kill me first. Who would you kill first?”

“What,” Levi said sourly, quietly, “are you trying to get me with charges of treason?”

“If I wanted you dead, you would be dead by now,” Erwin said. “I wouldn’t have made you my knight.”

Silence fell upon them, and Erwin closed his eyes, swore that he felt it like rain. Not even the trees whispered around them. Erwin opened his eyes and stared at the lines of Levi’s body for so long that he began to doubt it was actually Levi.

“I’d kill every single member on that council of yours,” Levi then breathed and the words fell cold over Erwin’s spine, made him roll his shoulders back and shudder.

“And then I’d kill the king,” Levi said.

“And finally, you.”

Erwin’s pulse had quickened. His blood rushed hot, just beneath his cold skin, and he flexed his fingers at his sides. He felt charged, alive, as if he stood in the presence of death itself. He nearly asked Levi how he’d do it, how he’d kill him.

“The council said that they still have found no struggle in the Common District,” Erwin said instead, his throat tighter. “They’ve been monitoring the town and they’ve found nothing.”

“Fucking liars,” Levi said from between his teeth. “You don’t believe them, do you?”

“I don’t. They said that the only problem they’ve encountered in town was you.”

Levi said nothing to that. Erwin imagined him smiling, crooked and slight and hungry; it seemed fitting.

“Is this the only place they can’t hear you?” Levi asked quietly. “Is that why you led me here?”

“Yes,” Erwin said and looked up, finding the leaves, normally dark and distinct in the moonlight, now hiding among the dark gray sky. He looked up, closed his eyes, his throat exposed. He looked up, swallowed, and was very aware that he was not alone, even in the stillness around him, he could feel Levi there, could feel Levi warm and with his sharp teeth, could feel Levi like he felt him in the alleyway.

“Something,” Levi said, his voice seeming closer, but Erwin hadn’t heard him move, “is wrong when the prince needs to hide from his own crown, don’t you think?”

A prince is a target: Erwin moved his lips around the words, but didn’t say them out loud.

 

 

Hange visited Erwin several days after his seventeenth birthday. They came, a few members of Yalkell’s council in tow, and, as expected of him, Erwin met them in the front hall, dressed in his long dress jacket, and newest pants. Behind his right shoulder stood Levi, with his crossed arms.

“Erwin,” Hange said cordially, with a practiced smile, one which Erwin returned. “Good to see you.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Erwin returned and, when he was able, he took Hange’s hand into his own, lifted it to his lips. With their free hand, Hange clutched the side of their olive dress and made a motion that was the hint of a curtsy. “We’ve had drinks prepared on the patio for your arrival.”

Hange’s smile went crooked, only briefly, and Erwin imagined that they wanted to laugh at him. “Lead the way,” they said and Erwin released their hand. He turned, caught sight of the thick scowl on Levi’s face, and his smile went crooked, too.

For the first hour or so of Hange’s visit, the two of them were beneath the close eye of Hange’s council. From his chair positioned on the balcony, he occasionally heard the men whisper, no doubt things about Levi, who, in accordance with his title, sat a few feet away, gazing out over the green and trees of the castle’s back courtyard. Both Hange and Erwin talked of the things that were expected of them as royalty, their words passing over the lips of the fine porcelain from which they drank their tea: political affairs, the weather, Mike, who seemed busier as of late. Erwin didn’t mention Levi and Hange didn’t ask, though Levi had been the focus of Erwin’s past few months. Eventually, members of Erwin’s council appeared and, with the excuse of their usual meeting, disappeared and took with them Hange’s council. This left Erwin and Hange beneath the eyes of the guards that stood inside, further away, and just out of hearing range if Erwin and Hange spoke softly enough.

Hange tilted their head forward, peered past Erwin and towards Levi. “So this is your new knight, hm?” they asked. Erwin, too, looked at Levi, his tea cup close to his lips, and Levi acknowledged them silently from the corner of his eye.

“Yes,” Erwin said and noticed that Levi’s cup was full, untouched.

“You two have created quite the talk,” Hange said and grinned with their teeth, looking excited. “I’ve been dying to visit and ask, but, of course, most of the talk you’ve created hasn’t been great, so I haven’t had the chance.”

Erwin expected no less, though he was curious. He took a sip of his drink and, as Levi looked back towards the courtyard, he again looked at Hange. Their posture had relaxed so they didn’t sit quite so high in their chair—he noticed that his had done the same. Hange’s dress bunched around their thighs. “What do people say?”

Hange paused. They balanced their cup on their lap, held it loosely between their hands, and stared out, past the iron railing of the balcony, past the green, towards the distant trees where Erwin and Levi and the king often hid. “Depends on ‘people’,” Hange eventually said, the smile gone from their lips, and they tilted their head—Erwin could no longer see their eyes from behind the thick frame of their glasses. “But the general consensus is that you are not to be trusted. That, if you take to the throne, you’ll ruin the order that our parents and their councils have worked to preserve.”

“People say you’re a threat,” Hange said, their voice quiet and beneath the range of the guard’s hearing. They tilted their head once more, this time to eye Erwin from over the frame of their glasses and Erwin watched them for a moment more before he, too, looked towards the distant trees. Levi watched him.

“That’s to be expected,” Erwin murmured. “I don’t regret it. I’d do it again.”

“Good,” Hange said.

The sun sat high and hot above them, and Erwin realized then, in the silence that settled, how warm he felt beneath its gaze. The tea was tepid in his cup and he set it aside, upon the small, round table that stood between his chair and Hange’s.

“There’s been other talk,” Hange said, their words even softer, and Erwin casually tilted himself, slumping his posture to lean his arm on the arm of the chair to better hear them. “Talk of war.”

Erwin inhaled the cool breeze that hissed and floated past him.

“Trost?” he asked quietly.

Hange nodded. “Rising tensions in the Trost district of Rose. To be honest, the council is being very vague. Even when I ask questions, they don’t answer them fully—they say Trost is threatening to advance into Sina and fight for land. That’s all they say and they’re preparing the military for it. There’s no talk of negotiations, no attempts to settle this without battle.” Hange finished the last of their drink and set their cup beside Erwin’s with a small clink.

Erwin closed his eyes, set the back of his head against his chair. The sun felt close upon his cheeks.

“There has also been talk of treason,” Hange whispered and Erwin opened his eyes, unsure if he heard the words or if the wind had mimicked them.

“From whom?” he breathed and watched the blue sky. “Treason from whom?”

“From within the castle itself,”Hange said beneath the hiss of the breeze and closed their eyes. “I heard it from the servants. They have eyes and ears everywhere.”

Erwin tilted his head, just enough to peer through the open doorway to the castle, just enough to see the guards in the near distance from the corner of his eye.

“They do,” he agreed quietly. “I’ll be careful.”

“Do. You and I more or less share the same council. If there’s treason in my castle, there’s treason in yours.”

“I told you I would kill them first,” Levi said, the first words that he had spoken since Hange arrived. As Erwin looked at him, Hange kept their eyes closed and smiled.

“I like him,” they said. “Does he like rocks?”

 

 

His father laid the blade of the sword upon the man’s right shoulder.

“Do you pledge your honor to uphold the name of the royal crown?” his father asked, his voice loud and caught in the tall walls of the church hall.

The man, Erwin had realized, was one of the soldiers who had helped the king home on that rainy day, one of the men who had held him and told the queen that his wound was shallow.

“I do,” the man said, with his head bowed, his gaze cast to the stone floor. He held his hand over his heart.

“Do you pledge to protect it with your life, to stand fearless in the face of forces that may oppose it and for which it stands?”

“I do.”

“And do you, Arthur Zackarius, from here forth pledge your life, your body, your mind, to my crown and better the lives of those living beneath it?”

“I do.”

Erwin’s father lifted the sword in the silence of the sanctuary. He then laid the flat edge of the blade over the man’s left shoulder. His movements were slow, tense with the strain of his healing wound. Erwin, standing in the front pew, between two of his father’s councilmen, felt as if he wasn’t allowed to breathe.

“As the ruler of this kingdom, I hereby promote you to Sir Arthur Zackarius, seventh knight of I, King Jacob Smith. Please rise.”

The man rose, born anew, and Erwin watched, wide-eyed.

 

 

Days before Erwin’s seventeenth birthday, he awoke to the feeling of the mattress shifting beneath him. He remained still, upon his back, his eyes closed, but listened intently, the bed sinking beneath him to indicate that Levi had left the bed. His chest swelled with anticipation but his insides quieted, as if listening as well, and he heard only the soft pad of Levi’s bare feet falling across the floor of his bedroom. Then he heard nothing. Nothing, for what seemed like minutes, arguably hours.

Then something inside him pricked, perked at attention, and he felt someone close, far closer than usual, close enough to awake within him that rush of danger, and he opened his eyes. Just as he did so, the bed shifted beneath him and Levi, quick and heavy, was atop him. Levi’s knees pressed to his shoulders and with one hand, Levi took a tight hold of his hair. With the other, he held a bare blade to his throat.

The blue night was translucent as it fell across Levi, over the divot of his cheekbone, into the dark strands of his hair, deeper into the shapes of the bunches of his white shirt. Erwin curled his fingers tight in the sheets, his hands at his sides. Above him, Levi tilted his head, bared his teeth, and he looked familiar, so familiar.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t kill me first,” Erwin breathed.

Inside him, his blood roared through his veins, loud and hot, but not the least bit distracting, not with Levi and Levi’s hand in his hair and Levi’s blade at his throat, once more, and he was exactly how Erwin remembered him.

“Did you rat us out that day?” Levi asked, his voice level and of a softness that was mindful of the silence around them. He tilted his head and, as his bangs shifted over his forehead, Erwin saw his hair messed near the back of his head, reminiscent of how it had laid upon the pillow. “You told your council about our cartel the instant you left.” Conversationally, as if he wasn’t holding his blade to Erwin’s throat. Levi’s gaze dropped to what was left of the scar upon Erwin’s neck.

“I didn’t,” Erwin said quietly. “I told you I was there of my own accord.”

Levi measured Erwin’s words and Erwin swallowed, testing the blade against his skin.

“I should have killed you that day,” Levi said like smoke.

“If you had, you’d be dead, too.”

Levi scoffed, a quiet hiss of something akin to laughter. His fingers tightened in Erwin’s hair and he pulled Erwin’s head back, further exposing his throat. The feeling left a flush high in Erwin’s cheeks and Erwin grit his teeth.

“Don’t say that like I owe you something,” Levi snarled and Erwin remembered that day, the way Levi had looked at him, with his eyes aflame. “I owe you nothing.”

“You don’t,” Erwin agreed, the lines of his voice tense and taut. He paused and realized that his fingers had dampened around the sheets, his palms hot and sweating, and Levi pressed more of his weight into his chest. “What makes you think that you could get away with murdering me now? What’s changed?”

The loose collar of Levi’s shirt dipped lazily over his shoulder. His skin was blue in the moonlight, his teeth, bared behind his lips and caught just barely in the lighting, white.

“Do you know why I made you my knight?” Erwin asked, his voice barely there.

Levi didn’t move, said nothing, and Erwin’s breathing picked up, as if only realizing then the full weight of Levi’s body over his lungs. Erwin wondered if Levi could feel the pound of his heartbeat.

Erwin opened his mouth, licked his lips, and his words were difficult to choose. “I’ve seen knights made of nobles and military men, but I’ve never seen any knight fight as you do.” It felt like an understatement, like anything he could say would be an understatement, like he couldn’t put into words the way he had immortalized Levi inside his mind.

“None of them have anything to fight for,” Levi murmured. Erwin didn’t see his lips move.

“They fight for a name,” Erwin said calmly, “for honor.”

“And I fight for my life.”

The conversation seemed to settle itself, some sort of agreement met. Its end fell over them in a near casual silence, and Erwin nearly closed his eyes—nearly, but Levi was still close and dangerous, heavy on top of Erwin’s chest, and Erwin’s body was still wound like a spring, tight and breathless. Levi was just as taut, just as motionless above him—Erwin could feel him. His knuckles were hard on Erwin’s scalp.

Erwin swallowed again and the blade felt too familiar against his throat. “What makes you think you could get away with killing me tonight?” he asked again, quieter this time.

The line of Levi’s lips was thin, caught only in the corner by the night light. He said nothing and, though he couldn’t quite see Levi’s eyes, he knew that Levi was watching him, watching him and thinking and Erwin wondered if his eyes were as murderous as they had been that day, first in the alley, second in the courtroom. Levi left him in an infinite, stagnant moment, a moment caught between life and death, and Erwin imagined what it would feel like if Levi did slit his throat, wondered if it would hurt, if it would resemble drowning. Would he struggle, would he not be able too—would the blood be hot as it poured down his neck and pooled in his collar bone, or would he not be able to feel it at all?

Then Levi turned his head, away from the window, leaving only his hair in the window’s pallor. First the blade was gone from Erwin’s throat, then the hand in his hair, then Levi’s body, folded and rolled off to the side, and the mattress lifted beneath Erwin again. Levi rolled back to his side of the bed, discarded the blade somewhere that Erwin didn’t see, and he settled again on his side, beneath the sheets, his back to Erwin. Erwin watched the way that Levi’s night shirt cratered between his shoulder blades.

Only minutes after Levi had settled again did Erwin release the sheets, his fingers shaking and aching in their cold sweat.

 

 

The sparring blades stood propped up against a nearby tree, forgotten. Erwin heard the patter of rain on the leaves far above their heads before he felt it—he tipped his head up and rain drops fell in plops upon his nose, his cheeks, his lips, and he licked them away. In both hands, he held the handle of his blade, the blade that he wore at his side, the blade that he had laid gracefully upon Levi’s shoulders that day, months ago.

Somewhere, across the clearing, stood Levi with a blade of his own, but Erwin couldn’t see him, not without the aid of the moonlight in the thickest part of night. He looked up, briefly, and the sky was as black as the trees—raindrops fell over his forehead. Erwin looked forward again, drew a deep breath in, the pound of his heart loud inside him, but he elected to ignore it. He listened around him, around the raindrops, tightened his fingers around the blade, listened.

It eventually occurred to him that Levi could have run. The woods behind the castle were deep and secretive, Levi would have no hard time of turning and escaping, not with the way Erwin couldn’t see him.

And, just as Erwin convinced himself that he was alone, he heard it—the crunch of feet falling upon the grass to his left, much closer than where he had left Levi, and he twisted, felt the cloth of Levi’s jacket graze his arm as he did.

“Spar with me,” he had said yesterday afternoon, behind the iron bars of the balcony railing, beneath the range of the guard’s hearing. “Tomorrow night.” His eyes had followed the twist of the ivy creeping over the railing, reaching and curling its fingers down the bars and towards the stone of the balcony, which it couldn’t quite grasp.

“Sure,” Levi had said, slumped in his chair beside Erwin’s. He, too, had eyed the ivy.

Erwin jumped, avoided Levi’s leg as Levi tried to kick his knees out from beneath him. He heard Levi grunt.

The rain begun to seep through his shirt, clinging coldly to him, but his skin, his insides, ran hot. He stepped forward, lashed out towards Levi with his blade tight in his hand, and was unsurprised when he missed. His breathing quickened, feeling rough in his throat and in his lungs and he heard the grass cave to their every step, heard the stinted sounds that tore from Levi’s mouth—in front of him, behind him, to his left, his right, and he never stopped moving, neither of them stopped moving.

Levi struck first, his blade catching Erwin’s shirt and biting into his shoulder, sharp and shrill.

“What’s in the bag?” Levi had asked as they passed across the court yard, towards the trees, back when they could see each other in shapes, the dim glow castle windows at their backs.

“Sparring blades,” Erwin had said and Levi had scoffed.

“You’ll learn shit with those.”

Never before had Erwin fought a battle with a disadvantage in speed and it didn’t take him long to realize that this would be the first. He was sure that being able to see Levi would barely aid him, not with the way that Levi was everywhere at once, and Levi’s blade burned his upper arm shallowly, then his elbow immediately after—and Erwin listened. Rain ran in heavy drops through his hair, over his face, his movements, and he listened, through the breathing in his ears, through the roar of adrenaline, electric, inside him, the gallop of his heart. He listened and listened and Levi became predictable.

Levi’s breath was to his right and Erwin ducked his shoulder, twisted his wrist and his blade caught Levi’s forearm.

The rain hushed and Erwin heard the sharp intake of Levi’s breath, loud and right in his ear.

Erwin kicked, took Levi’s legs from beneath him, and Erwin felt his own breath leave his lungs when Levi hit the ground. Erwin dropped, to his knees, and dropped his blade before he reached out and groped to take Levi’s as well.

Rain fell harder onto them and they knelt there, laid there, their skin running wet with thick rain drops and blood, and Erwin’s breath was sharp in his throat, in his chest, and he felt himself shaking, felt himself all over, from his skin down to the bones buried inside him.

Felt himself alive.

The blades laid stiff on the grass beside them and, after minutes of breathing, Erwin reached out and set his fingers carefully on Levi’s side. Levi’s shirt was wet, too, wet and hot and wrinkled and Erwin could feel the density of Levi’s muscles, and the way they rose and fell with his breathing. Erwin licked his lips.

“Where did I get you?” he asked quietly, like glass.

“Arm,” Levi said, breathless and nearly inaudible beneath the hiss of the rain. If he stared long enough, he could make out Levi’s outline in the grass, a thinner black among the thick black ground.

Erwin left his fingers on Levi’s side—Levi let him—and now fought with himself, resisting for minutes the urge to lay down beside his knight.

 

 

“You left the kingdom under the council’s rule,” Levi said as he wrapped Thatcher’s reigns around the thick trunk of the tree. His horse, black, shifted and shook its head, stepping a bit closer to Beauty, who was already tied and eating. Erwin smoothed his fingers over her white body and patted her neck firmly.

“I didn’t,” Erwin said, his words quiet in the hollow and cool night. “I have given them their orders. If they disobey them, it can be argued as treason and I could have their heads.”

He swallowed in the quiet that followed. The leather of Levi’s reigns rubbed against itself as he finished the knot and he patted his horse’s shoulder as well. “If they don’t get yours first,” Levi said, quietly, the words that Erwin had left unspoken, and pulled his horse’s feed from his saddle bags. He hooked the oats over the horse’s muzzle and again patted his shoulder.

“If they don’t get mine first,” Erwin agreed. He unsnapped his own saddle bags and withdrew a small leather pouch, the reason that they had come here, to this clearing, now purple and shadowed in the night, about an hour from his palace. But if he turned around—he didn’t—he knew he’d be able to see the dim lights of Stohess, his kingdom standing their ground, never far no matter where he went.

The grass was tall and brushed against the calves of his boots as he took several steps away from their horses. Levi followed, the grass quietly hissing in his movements, and Erwin didn’t turn around, no matter how looming the gaze of his kingdom seemed (somewhere inside him, he briefly wondered when it had come to this, when he looked for places to hide from Stohess, from his country, from his castle, when his kingdom truly wasn’t his kingdom any longer, but theirs.)

He stared forward, the purple sky deep and dreamlike above the black field that stretched, free, as far as he could see. He stared and the night blew a chilled breath against the back of his neck, made his shoulders roll, and Levi was at his side, the bottoms of their long coats swaying against their thighs.

“Something’s wrong when a king needs to hide from his own crown,” Levi reminded him, firmly though without accusation.

“Something is very wrong,” Erwin, again, agreed quietly and he folded his legs, sitting himself in the tall grass. He held the leather pouch tight in his hand and set his elbows upon his bent legs. Levi sat beside him. “Something is even more wrong when the king’s council kills him and the queen, too.” Breathing seemed more difficult than before.

“Power,” Levi murmured and Erwin looked sideways at him, the bridge of his nose pale and white beneath the moon. “Everybody wants to rule the world.” Levi turned his head and looked at him, too, and Erwin leaned in, briefly, kissed him Levi’s lips were warm and there, they were there, against his own, and that was what mattered.

“What about you, your highness?” Levi breathed, his voice rough when Erwin withdrew, as if Erwin had stolen it from him. “You, who gets to rule the world. What do you want to do with it?”

Erwin pushed his thumb beneath the flap of the pouch and it made a snapping as its button gave. He didn’t answer and pulled the pipe from the pouch, propped it between his index and middle fingers, and offered the pouch to Levi, who took it. Erwin held the pipe still and listened as Levi pulled the opium from the pouch, easily positioned it inside the pipe. The breeze carried the drug’s scent towards him and he inhaled.

They watched from behind him.

“This may not work as well without a lamp,” Levi muttered, mainly to himself, and then there was a crack and flame ignited upon Levi’s match. It glowed orange over the contours of his cheeks and over the pale wood of the head of the pipe. Levi lifted the flame and held it close to the bottom of the pipe, cupping his other hand to both focus the heat of the flame and protect it from the breeze. After a still moment, he breathed, “Try now.” He kept his eyes upon the flame, which was slowly devouring the match pinched between his fingers.

Erwin ducked his head and brought his lips to the end of the pipe. He inhaled and a dizzying warmth filled his mouth, a warmth that immediately lifted him from his bones—only slightly, but enough for him to feel it, and he shuddered. “Yeah,” he breathed. “That worked.”

“Good,” Levi said and Erwin took another drag before the flame crept too close to Levi’s fingertips and Levi extinguished it with his breath. The fire had burned itself into Erwin’s vision, leaving dark spots upon the grass around them, upon the sky above him, upon Levi’s face beside him. He passed the pipe to Levi in exchange for the matches. This time he lit the match, protected it, and Levi took the drag. Erwin watched him, watched the way he closed his eyes and the way his eyelashes fanned dark on the bruises beneath his eyes. He watched the way Levi’s lips tightened themselves into a firm line, trapping the vapor in his mouth, and then they slackened, parted, and Erwin heard the breath pass from Levi’s lips, soft and barely there and he loved the sound, he had loved the sound for years now. Levi opened his eyes again, his irises black as he watched Erwin and drew the pipe to his lips again for another drag. He inhaled and watched Erwin and Erwin floated beside him, fixated, addicted. The flame bit Erwin’s fingertip and he twitched, hissed, and blew out the flame.

They passed the pipe back and forth like this, tucking the used matches back into the leather once they had cooled, until the opium was vaporized, leaving them both in a cloud and, from afar, Erwin’s kingdom watched them, conspired against them. They had tucked the pipe back into its pouch minutes ago when Erwin closed his eyes, ran his shaking fingers through his hair. “Sometimes I think I should let them get away with it,” he breathed, the words heavy in his mind, the only thing anchoring him to the grass, the only thing keeping him from closing his eyes and drifting off towards the moon.

“The council?” Levi said, his voice rough, and he had mimicked Erwin’s posture, with his legs bent in front of him and his forearms draped lazily over his knees. “Why?”

“Yes.” The word escaped his lips like a thin line of smoke, a hiss that lost itself in the breeze. “I am a king at twenty-one, I have a kingdom, I have a country that is at war with itself, and I sometimes think I’m not the one who can bring it to peace.

“I don’t know what to do,” Erwin said, the words spilling from his mouth now like vomit, an anxiety that he had nearly forgotten, that showed itself in his trembling fingers—or perhaps that was the opium. “I have my own council trying to kill me and, fuck, sometimes I think I should let them because maybe they know how to fix this and I don’t.”

“Erwin—”

The words poured and poured and Erwin felt as if he was retching, his fingers curled and tight in his hair. “The throne is mine, I can rule this world, I’m supposed to rule this world, but what if I’m not, what if this is something that I just cannot fix, I mean, fuck, I ran away, I came here instead of facing them. I’m so afraid that they’re trying to kill me that I ran and I took you with me and here we are, out of our minds, and maybe I’m only paranoid. They’ve never told me that they’re trying to kill me—but my father knew they were, knew what they wanted.”

“Erwin—”

Erwin’s stomach twisted, empty, the last of its words streaming from his throat and out of his mouth. “Our entire country is looking at me,” he breathed, afraid, “they all think that I have the answer, that I can fix this, but I really have no fucking idea. I’m lying to them, I doubt myself every single day I wake up, the bed that we sleep in, the king’s bed, it is not mine, it was never meant for me, my father should still be here—”

The breath left his body as he hit the ground. His spine arched and he groaned, dizzy, and there was a weight above him, heavy and warm on his stomach, a weight that he knew all too well, and he reached out, curled his fingers tight in Levi’s jacket. Levi leaned over him, further and further until their cheeks were nearly touching, and Erwin tilted his head, his breathing heavier and strands of Levi’s hair fell over his nose.

“Listen to me,” Levi demanded, low, and his fingers slid across Erwin’s throat, tracing gentle lines into Erwin’s skin. “Are you listening?”

“Yes,” Erwin breathed immediately and held on tight.

“You are king. You were born to be king, born to rule, you are exactly where you are supposed to be,” Levi said and Erwin believed him, Erwin didn’t even think to doubt him. He closed his eyes and listened as Levi continued. “You are king, and kings are human. You’re weak. We’re all weak. But you’ve already done what most of us can’t—you’ve admitted this, to yourself, to me. You are supposed to be the strongest of us all, and you said it yourself that you are weak.”

Levi’s fingers against Erwin’s throat were a slow, hypnotic cadence, back and forth, back and forth upon his throat, and Erwin’s breathing deepened. He felt Levi’s other hand lay across his closed eyes.

“And that’s exactly why that throne belongs to you,” Levi continued, firmly, inherently clear. “The people who want your throne, the old men on your council, think that they can do anything, they think that they can rule your people through fear, they think that they can take this world, and make it theirs. They think that they can get away with it, they think that they’re strong. And they will fucking stop at nothing, no matter how stupid their actions, and they will kill themselves and kill us all.

“They are not meant to have this world,” Levi said, his breath warm against Erwin’s ear, his body warm above him, “and there’s only one person who can stop them from taking it.

“You didn’t run away,” he said. “You’re hiding until the time is right.

“They’ve already committed acts of treason,” he said.

He said, “Their heads are yours.”

Erwin turned his head and kissed Levi. Levi grunted a small sound into Erwin’s mouth and kissed him in return, his lips pushing and pulling, his tongue and teeth over Erwin’s lips, and Erwin clutched his hair, kept his eyes closed, held onto him because they would both float away if he let go. Levi lowered himself, moved their bodies against each other, hot and with too many barriers between them, so Levi moved his hands and deftly undid the buttons of Erwin’s jacket. Erwin spread his legs and bent his knees around Levi’s hips.

“I don’t fucking kneel for anyone,” Levi growled into Erwin’s mouth and Erwin licked the words away, “except you.” Levi pushed the lapels of Erwin’s jacket open and then moved his hand, curled his fingers tight in Erwin’s hair, and jerked his head back. His lips fell over Erwin’s neck and Erwin’s breathing was shallow, hot in the air around them. He opened his eyes and stared up at the purple sky, trembling as Levi bit a mark into his neck.

Erwin’s jacket was left unbuttoned, his shirt untucked and undone to expose his chest and stomach, marked all over with the tight skin of scars. Levi’s jacket had been discarded into the tall grass beside him, his shirt also unbuttoned and hanging loose over his one shoulder—Erwin pulled him down, bit a mark into it—and soon, both Levi’s pants and boots were piled atop his forgotten jacket. And Levi was again on top of him, glowing and stretching up towards the sky, the divots of his ribs the only shadows upon his white torso, and Erwin gripped his sides, held him tight, lest the night try to take him away. Levi moaned and, after the barest amount of preparation, sat himself upon Erwin’s cock, drawing an identical moan from Erwin’s mouth.

Levi tipped his head back until Erwin could no longer see his face, could only see the underside of his chin and the sharp line of his jaw. Erwin didn’t know if he could hear the wind or if he heard the heavy falling of their breath into the still air. He pressed his fingertips hard to Levi’s skin, holding him, bruising him, and Erwin knew that Levi was scarred, just as much as himself, but he couldn’t see anything upon Levi’s body, no blemishes, no memories of war. Then Levi tipped his head back down and his dark hair fell over his eyes, his hot breath audible, and he moved, lifting himself, then driving himself back onto Erwin. He leaned forward, spread his warm fingers over Erwin’s buzzing skin, and his touch was magnetic, drawing Erwin’s spine into an arch.

And Erwin, in the last night that he would spend with Levi, knew then that he could rule this world.

 

 

It was nearly a year before Levi was “trusted” enough within the kingdom to receive his own sword and horse. The event, for all its worth, was far from extravagant; such an occasion usually called for a ceremony, and for the knight to receive at least his sword in front of an assembly, bestowed upon them by the noble who had knighted them. But instead, Erwin and Levi had received word of Levi’s horse’s arrival from a servant who had found them passing through the corridor. Levi’s horse was in the stable beside Erwin’s, his sword delivered to Erwin’s quarters.

“Have you ever ridden before?” Erwin asked as they passed quickly through the courtyard and to the stable. The gray day fell in raindrops over their shoulders and their cloaked heads, in colder raindrops over their noses and cheeks.

“Of course,” Levi said from beside him, just loud enough over the murmur of the rain. The rain had collected over the green grass and it sloshed beneath their boots. Erwin walked faster, and Levi kept up without any trouble.

They reached the shelter of the stable and Erwin pushed his hood from his head. He pushed his fingers back through his hair, his fingers damp with rain, and he pressed his forearm to his face, patting it dry. Down the line of horses, Erwin heard one click its hooves upon the stone floor and he smiled.

“This place is dirty,” Levi muttered, looking down the wide aisle in which they now stood.

“Do you want to clean it?” Erwin asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“No.” Immediately. “I’m not your servant.”

Erwin smiled in the corners of his lips and led them down the aisle. They passed several of the military horses, who scoffed at them from inside their wooden stalls and bobbed their heads, looking for treats. Erwin patted their muzzles as they passed, hay and oats crunching beneath their steps and sticking to the wet soles of their boots. Dirt was ground into the cracks between the stones. Above them, the rain fell onto the wood roof in a quiet and constant rhythm.

Erwin stopped in front of the white horse near the opposite end of the stable. He stood close to her, held the underside of her muzzle and rubbed between her eyes gently. “Hi,” he said affectionately and then stepped aside. “She’s my horse, Beauty. Beauty, this is Levi. Please be nice to him.”

As if acknowledging him, the horse exhaled a breath as Levi stepped close. She then stood still and calm as Levi silently ran his fingers down her nose, up, then down again.

“You’re pretty,” Levi said quietly after a moment and the horse shook her head in a small motion. Erwin watched Levi’s fingers, noticed how gentle, how natural, they seemed over her face. Beauty didn’t move as Levi stroked her, relaxed, and she watched Erwin silently. When Erwin looked at her, he felt she knew something that he didn’t, everything that he didn’t.

The horse beside Beauty was black. He clicked his hooves across the stone, effectively drawing attention to himself—both Levi and Erwin looked his way. Levi moved first, stepping away from Beauty and towards the black horse, his fingers lingering across Beauty’s muzzle as he withdrew. “This one must be mine,” Levi said quietly and stopped in front of the black horse, who shook his head and again tapped his hoof over the floor. Erwin didn’t say anything and watched as Levi stood in front of the horse, stared at him, focused, as if trying to figure him out. The horse looked much the same and Erwin tucked his hands beneath his cloak and into his jacket pockets. The longer Levi and the horse stared at each other, the more he felt as if he had missed something, as if they were saying things that he couldn’t hear.

Levi eventually reached up and brushed the back of his hand down the horse’s nose and the horse blinked, lowered his head in the slightest, towards Levi’s.

“This one must be mine?” Levi repeated, quieter than before, so quiet that the hiss of the rain outside seemed loud and rude.

Erwin nodded. “He’s yours.”

“What’s his name?”

“That’s for you to decide.”

Levi fell silent again, his knuckles brushing gently over the horse’s muzzle. Beauty lowered her head and pushed her nose insistently against Erwin’s shoulder, and he smiled and withdrew his hand from his pocket to rub her ears. As he did, he watched Levi quietly and noticed that the rigidity with which Levi carried himself was gone. Levi stood unguarded and small in the aisle of the stable, quiet and reserved. Erwin looked over the lax line of his shoulders, the fingers of his free hand curled loosely and naturally at his side, committed this Levi, too, to memory.

“Thatcher,” Levi said several moments later, and Erwin was still watching him, even as Levi rested his knuckles between the horse’s eyes and glanced sideways at Erwin. Erwin expected Levi’s guard to rise again, as if the reminder of Erwin’s company would bring him back to usual self, but it didn’t. He watched Erwin from beneath the dim and flickering fire light of the stable, and Erwin’s fingers stilled in Beauty’s mane. Erwin felt his heartbeat quicken inside him. “Do any of the other horses have that name?”

Erwin shook his head and slowly slipped his fingers down the side of Beauty’s face, then hid them beneath his cloak and in his jacket pocket. “No, it’s all yours.”

Levi looked at his horse again, stroked his muzzle once more before he patted his nose. He then stepped back, the soles of his boots scuffing against the rough stone floor.

“We’ll take him for a ride when it clears up,” Erwin said, and Levi didn’t look at him. He only nodded, his eyes fixed upon Thatcher.

A warmth had settled inside Erwin, a loitering fog inside his stomach and creeping up his chest.

“And my sword?” Levi asked quietly and tipped his head sideways to look at Erwin.

“In my quarters,” Erwin said, placing one foot behind him, towards the stable door. “Come.” He turned slowly on his heels and saw Levi pet Thatcher’s muzzle once more before he followed Erwin back into the rain, their hoods draped once more over their heads.

A long, black box sat still and expectant across the length of Erwin’s dresser. Levi entered Erwin’s quarter first, Erwin holding the door open for him and then closing it behind them, and approached the box slowly, carefully. He ran his fingers over it with contemplation before he took the ends of the box and lifted it open.

Inside, a steel sheath sat pillowed in a bed of red cloth. The sheath was silver, engraved with golden, ornate lines that spanned it from end to end. Its very end, where the sheath fit the sharp point of the sword, bore the serpent crest of Erwin’s family. Erwin realized that Levi’s sheath looked identical to Erwin’s and he knew then, with certainty, that Levi was his, his knight, and the warmth inside him stirred, tightened, left him with a feeling similar to suffocation.

Levi again reached forward and traced the golden lines with his fingertips, down the sheath, until they reached the head of the serpent. “Why a snake?” Levi asked thoughtfully, tracing the curve of its body.

“The snake is a well-rounded warrior,” Erwin murmured, his eyes fixed upon Levi’s fingers. “It has its strength, but it must also rely on its speed and tactical abilities.”

Levi slipped his fingers beneath the length of the sheath. “Some people think the snake represents dishonesty,” he said and lifted the sword, testing its balance, its weight.

“Some people are right,” Erwin said and watched as Levi wrapped his fingers around both the width of the sheath and the sword’s handle—the sword’s handle was engraved identically to Erwin’s, but instead of colored red, Levi’s was colored green. Levi withdrew the sword from its sheath and they made a metallic sound as they slid across each other. He held it upwards, its blade tall and reaching above his head. He held it close to him his face, inspecting it, and from where Erwin stood, it looked as if the blade had bisected Levi’s face.

Levi stepped back, tipped the blade forward in the slightest, weighed it. “So you think it’s acceptable to lie to your people?” he asked, focused now upon Erwin. He turned sideways and lifted the sword, his arm fully outstretched and the tip of the blade breathed against the center of Erwin’s throat. Erwin lifted his head and stared down at Levi. The heat inside him had not quite subsided and it tightened its hold in Erwin’s chest.

“Yes,” Erwin murmured. “There is a time and a place for it.”

“Have you lied to me?” Levi countered, quietly, and Erwin lifted a hand, pressed his index fingertip to the flat end of the blade where its surface steepled. The sword was silk beneath his touch, weightless. Levi stared at him expectantly, with remnants of that day in the alleyway.

“I haven’t,” Erwin said quietly, and nothing changed in Levi’s eyes.

 

 

“Trost has crossed into our territory,” the king, Erwin’s father, had said from the head of the council table, his voice loud and authoritative in the large hall. “We will meet them on at the southern plains two weeks from this day, before they can advance any further.”

To that council meeting, Erwin had worn two bandages, both wrapped around his forearms, both concealed beneath the long sleeves of his button-down.

“We will join forces with Yalkell before we proceed to the plains,” Erwin’s father had said.

The councilmen had said nothing, content.

“As of today,” the king had said, “Stohess is again at war with Trost.” He spoke and stared forward, down the length of the table, but at no one in particular. His jaw had tensed as he finished speaking and he had sat still, far too still, and Erwin had known that he, too, remembered the last time they had been at war.

Now, Erwin stood in the palace’s black library, just outside the edge of dusk’s grasp, try as it might to touch him through the curtained window. He stood, his heart throwing itself against his chest, his fingers curled tight at his sides. Outside, he heard the bell, the low toll of the bell informing their kingdom that they were, once more, at war. With every ring of the bell—metallic and heavy and lingering, its song sticking in the air like a suffocating humidity—military men through the districts looked up and answered its call, packing their things to arrive at the castle no later than tomorrow’s dawn.

Erwin was barely eighteen.

He stared down the window pane, near the sill of its wooden frame, and he thought that, if he stared hard enough, he’d be able to see his young handprints, stained upon the glass. He stared, though he saw nothing but dark grass outside, the darker gate that stood beyond.

Behind him, Levi stood silent, watching, his knight’s sword sheathed at his side, and when Erwin looked over his shoulder, he couldn’t see him. The room, by all accounts, looked empty.

It felt anything but.

 

 

“A knight,” Erwin’s father said, his voice strained but not without some complacency as he came close, the blunt edge of his sparring blade catching Erwin’s. Erwin grunted as he took the force of his father’s attack and then tilted his sword, letting his father’s blade roll off of his own and he twisted sideways. “I admit, not even I saw that opportunity.”

“You once told me to be reckless,” Erwin said from between his teeth and lunged forward, his blade lowered for his father’s legs. His father caught the blow right at his thigh’s level. Erwin bounced backwards, momentarily retreating, regathering himself before he struck again, this time at his father’s opposite side, and this time the king retreated to avoid the blow.

Levi’s trial had taken place only yesterday, but it already seemed to do a year’s worth of impact. The castle echoed with hushed whispers that only stopped when Erwin and Levi passed by them, and only stopped so long as they were within close proximity. Erwin and Levi stepped out of the range of comprehension and they started again, clouding the air like a lingering smoke.

“You’ve angered the council,” the king said and spun and his elbow caught Erwin’s shoulder in a hard, blunt blow. Erwin grunted and stumbled before he rolled with the force of the attack. An ache throbbed over his shoulder blades and he rolled his neck. “They’ve asked a number of things from me.”

“The first,” the king said and stepped back, back, back, leading Erwin further away from the trees and into the clearest part of the forest, “is they’ve asked me to revoke Ackerman’s knighthood. Or, rather, asked me to allow them to do so.”

Erwin grit his teeth, held the hilt of the blade in both hands and charged his father, leaning right, until his father leaned left to escape, then he turned abruptly, the toe of his boot sliding over the damp grass, and recovered left, catching his father’s side. He heard his father gasp audibly.

“The second, is they’ve asked—” the king took several quick and light steps backwards, avoiding Erwin’s subsequent blows, “—for me to at least keep his origin a secret.”

“And?” Erwin hissed, the word escaping between his teeth, and his father struck at him. He caught the attack with his own blade, the thick metal clanking loudly and catching in the surrounding trees. Erwin’s arms shook as he held the force behind his father’s sword and his heart was loud in his head, louder than the heavy breathing that passed through his nose.

Across from him, his father panted as well, clearly struggling with Erwin’s weight. “Before I answer them, I first have a question for you,” he breathed. “Why did you make Ackerman your knight? Attempts to save his life aside, why did you commit him to your side?”

“Because he’s the best,” Erwin managed, his words right and tense.

“You’ve only seen him fight once.”

“That was enough.”

Erwin’s father surged forward, and Erwin broke. He fell back, caving, and what was left of his breath left his body when his back hit the ground. Above him, the stars stirred, the dark sky seeming so, so far away, and Erwin blinked blearily. Behind his eyes, he saw Levi, watching him like he was something to devour.

“Where is your knight now?” Erwin’s father asked from somewhere above him. Erwin opened his eyes again and swallowed; his father was not in his immediate line of vision.

“I left him in my quarters,” he said and cleared his throat. His body ached, laying heavy and throbbing in the cold grass. “The guards are outside the door.”

“What if he intends to kill you?”

“Then he’ll wait for the right moment to do so. Now is not the time.” Once more, Erwin closed his eyes. He didn’t quite believe his words; he was sure that if Levi wanted to kill him, Levi would kill him when he wanted, opportune or not. Yes, if Levi were to murder him now, he would no doubt be caught, but he knew there was a possibility that Levi didn’t care. A possibility, though it was slim; if Levi didn’t value his life for some reason, Erwin was sure that Levi would never have accepted a knight’s position.

The next time Erwin opened his eyes, when the rushing in his ears had hushed, he found the shape of his father standing tall and dark above him. “What will you tell your council?” he asked quietly.

“I will tell them that all matters pertaining to Levi Ackerman are to be handled by you and you alone,” his father said from far, far above him. “I will tell them that Levi Ackerman is your knight, not mine.”

 

 

The bell’s toll brought to them the burden of war—its deep and resounding peal summoned lines upon lines of soldiers, marching to the castle’s gates, their steps authoritative and practiced and ready. Ready to lay down their lives for a name, for honor, but not without their last rites, not without a last night.

As per tradition, the night before the king and his troops were set to march off to meet Yalkell, the palace threw celebration for nobility and its soldiers and those the soldiers would leave behind. The last ball had been held about a decade prior, when Erwin was too young to attend, when his father had seen his first war.

This ball found Erwin at eighteen. Thirty minutes before he and Levi were expected downstairs, he slipped into his new dress jacket, black with red accents and golden embroidery and buttons, tailored to him specifically for this occasion. With it, he wore his fitted black pants and boots and a pin of his family’s crest on its lapel. Levi wore a similar outfit, though his jacket was white with green accents and the same golden embroidering (and when Erwin slipped a comb through Levi’s hair, slicking one side of his hair down, Levi did nothing to resist.) As per knight’s code, Levi carried his sword holstered at his hip, and minutes before they descended from Erwin’s quarters, Erwin looked his knight over, really looked at him, and the desire to touch buzzed around his fingertips, causing them to twitch.

“Do I look rich enough for you?” Levi asked with a dry condescension. “Royal enough?”

Erwin didn’t say anything.

Everyone, it seemed, had been waiting for them. Erwin descended the wooden staircase into the grand hall, Levi in step behind his right shoulder. The guests, clad in their nicest jackets and dresses accented with glittering glasses perched between their fingers, stopped and watched as Erwin and Levi entered the room. Violins were soft in the background, unimposing, three musicians positioned in the corner of the hall and they, too, watched Erwin and Levi. Erwin’s father sat beside Hange’s older brother, the king of Yalkell, both of them positioned at the center of a long table that stretched the length of the hall. On either side of them sat their councils, lined and silent and criticizing. Erwin kept his head tilted upwards, staring down his cheeks at Hange, who waited for him in a long, teal dress, at the foot of the stairs.

The grand hall had also been dressed up, much like those who occupied it. Tables smaller than the kings’ table stood gridded over its expanse, adorned in embroidered cloths and tended to by a number of servants, each balancing large platters of drinks and food on their gloved hands. The stairs, down which Erwin and Levi descended, had also been dressed in a large, crimson rug, stitched with designs that looked much like the hilts of Erwin’s and Levi’s swords.

Erwin’s boots fell upon the hall’s wooden floor in quiet clicks, and he took Hange’s hand. He bowed to them, lifted their hand to kiss their knuckles, and smiled with his lips on their hand. Hange smiled as well, tipped their head sideways, and the curls of their red hair shifted upon the shoulders of their dress. This motion performed, the company of the hall rose once more into a quiet hum of conversation and the strings of the violins rose in compliment. Eyes turned away from Erwin and Levi and Erwin straightened, caught his father’s eye from across the hall. His father nodded to him before he turned his head to say something to the king of Yalkell.

Erwin straightened and Levi, still standing upon the first step to the staircase, stood at his height. They shared a quick, sideways look, unease solemn and dark in their eyes, before Erwin looked once more at Hange, their fingers still caught in his.

“You look amazing,” he said with a small smile and Hange smiled with their teeth in return.

“As do you,” they said. “Though we don’t exactly match.”

Erwin looked down the length of their teal dress, the way it pooled around their feet, before he looked down his jacket. “I think it’s a nice compliment,” he said. “May I have a dance?” As per his duty.

Hange bowed their head. “You may.” They then looked at Levi, still smiling. “I promise I’ll give him back.”

Levi’s expression barely changed, but Erwin thought he looked a little at a loss of what to do with that comment. “Excuse us,” Erwin said to Levi. “Help yourself to anything you’d like.” Levi nodded in understanding and Erwin, his hand still in Hange’s, led them between the idle bodies and towards the center of the hall, where men and women held each other and spun and stepped with their toes to the trills and dips of the violins.

They easily found a space amidst the dancers and followed their motions, their movements practiced and effortless. Erwin’s fingers fit between Hange’s and his other hand sat at their hip; their hand sat on his shoulder. They met each other’s steps, turned with each other when necessary, and, from over Hange’s shoulder, Erwin caught sight of his father talking with his council on one side of the room and, on the other, he saw Levi, standing near the wall, nursing a crystal glass, his hand caught over the rim of the glass. Levi saw him, too, seemed to be watching them.

“You were right,” Erwin said after a moment, below the serenade of violins. He looked again at Hange, who was not smiling. “About the war.”

“I know,” they said. “I wish I hadn’t been. But it just means that you and I need to be more careful.”

They spun and Erwin’s father laughed with one of his councilmen. Something twisted deep inside Erwin.

“When the kings are away,” Hange breathed, “the councilmen will play.”

Erwin’s mother had not come back from war. The reminder struck his bones, sharp and paralyzing, and his step faltered, only briefly, before Hange caught him and corrected him. He gritted his teeth and they turned again. Levi watched them from across the room, and Erwin’s heartbeat was quick, restless.

The violins slowed and Erwin drew in a deep breath, calmed himself. Both he and Hange followed the intimate tempo of the strings and he leaned forward, bringing his lips closer to Hange’s ear. “Do you think this war is another assassination?”

“I know it is,” they said, their breath falling upon Erwin’s ear. “If my brother and your father don’t come back, that will be all the proof we need.”

“Not for a conviction,” Erwin said. “Sending them to war is the easiest way to murder them.”

“No, it won’t be enough to sentence the council for treason,” Hange said, and Erwin moved his hand to their lower back. “But it will be enough for you and I to know. And you know who will be the next target once my brother is gone, once your father is gone.”

“The only targets left,” Erwin said, breathless. “The heirs to the throne.”

“When the kings are away,” Hange said again, “the councilmen will play.”

Levi stared at them from across the hall.

Neither he nor Hange said anymore for the rest of the number. They remained close, stepping in sync with each other, and Hange’s hand moved from Erwin’s shoulder to the back of his neck. Erwin caught Levi’s gaze once more before he closed his eyes.

The violins sang a long note before they picked up the tempo again. Hange and Erwin stepped from the dancing crowd, both of them with practiced smiles and their fingers entwined. “I know I said I’d give you back,” Hange said as they weaved between military men and their partners, towards Levi, “but can I have a dance with your knight? Please?”

Erwin smiled a bit wider and Levi tipped his head back, finished the contents of the glass. “You’ll have to ask him. I’m not sure he can dance.”

Hange’s eyes brightened at that. “I can teach him.”

Reluctantly, Levi agreed to Hange’s dance. As Hange led him towards the floor, Levi shot Erwin a dark and nearly murderous glance from over his shoulder and Erwin responded with an apologetic smile and a shrug. Levi’s discomfort, he knew, would not be in vain—surely it was good for politics if his knight danced with his planned betrothed. He took Levi’s place near the edge of the hall and nodded his as he gratefully took the drink that one of the castle’s servants offered him. His drink appeared to be the same as Levi’s and he sipped from it, the liquid bitter in his mouth, and his brow automatically furrowed with its bite.

Levi, it seemed, wasn’t familiar with dancing. Hange kept them near the corner of the dancing crowd, leaving plenty of room for mistakes, and Levi stared between them, watching their feet as they moved in stunted, careful movements. Eventually, however, Levi grew confident enough and lifted his gaze, watching Hange’s face as they moved, and he seemed tense, uncomfortable, but he caught on quickly. Erwin found the potential for grace in his steps, the sort of grace he saw in Levi’s movements as he fought. From over Hange’s shoulder, Levi’s gaze met his, not quite as murderous as before, and Erwin sipped from his glass.

Across the hall, through the heads of the soldiers and their partners for the night, Erwin saw his father, once more talking with the king of Yalkell. He wondered if they knew.

Erwin’s eyes then passed over the councilmembers that lined the table beside them. He wondered which ones were responsible for this, which ones were guilty, wondered if they all were.

He briefly caught sight of Mike, dancing with a woman near the far end of the hall—Erwin had never seen her before and wondered if she was the reason Mike had become so busy.

Then, once more, he met Levi’s gaze from over Hange’s shoulder—Levi would kill the council, first.

Another drink, Erwin’s brow cringed with the taste.

He breathed in a slow, deep breath through his nose, Levi’s eyes found his own again, and he felt in debt to his knight, felt that he needed him, needed him close, needed the fire inside him, far more than Levi would ever need him. He hadn’t realized it that day in the court room—he thought he had saved Levi’s life, but he knew now that Levi would save his.

Levi would be the reason he would fight, he could fight, Levi was his only chance of survival when he took the throne. The feeling was warm and swelled inside him, filled from his stomach to his chest, up his throat, and he tipped his head back before he took another drink. His fingers were warm around the cool glass, fogging its crystal around them.

Erwin had nearly finished his drink when Hange and Levi returned. Levi looked no more pleased than when he had left.

“He’s actually very good,” Hange announced upon their return, “he just needs more practice. Perhaps you can help him, Erwin?” they proposed with a grin in the corners of their lips.

“Perhaps,” Erwin agreed, his voice rough with the burn of his drink. He looked at Levi, who watched him with a scowl. He paused before he finished the rest of his drink and set his glass down on a nearby table. He then bowed, lowering his head beneath Levi’s, and stared up at his knight from beneath his eyelashes—Levi stared at him from down his cheeks, with a spark in his eyes that ignited hot and wanting over Erwin’s spine, and it made Erwin shudder. “May I have this dance?” he asked, and various people watched them from around the room, watched as the prince bowed to his knight.

Levi didn’t respond for a moment, he instead stared down at Erwin, as if committing the sight to memory. “Since you asked so nicely,” he eventually murmured.

Erwin didn’t take Levi’s hand when he led them to the dance floor; he trusted Levi would follow. Eyes followed them as they passed and Erwin stopped them where Hange had danced with Levi, near the far corner of the crowd, and Levi stood close to him, posture straight, eyes fixed upon his. Erwin lifted one hand, set the other on Levi’s shoulder. Levi lifted a hand as well, entwined their fingers, his fingers warm in between Erwin’s, and he set his hand at Erwin’s hip. Erwin stepped first, and Levi followed his lead.

Few times did Levi falter and, each time he did, Erwin caught, corrected him, and they were once more in sync. Levi’s shoulder was tense beneath Erwin’s touch and Erwin watched Levi, kept him close.

“This war is going to change everything,” Erwin murmured, his lips barely moving so as to escape the comprehension of the eyes that watched them. He glanced around after a moment; over Levi’s shoulder he saw the royal table watching them.

“I know,” Levi said, his voice matching Erwin’s.

“When I knighted you, I had no idea the matters that I was dragging you into,” Erwin said.

Levi said nothing. He glanced down briefly as his step faltered and Erwin looked down, too, watching as Levi fell back in time with his steps. When he lifted his gaze, Levi was already watching him.

“I never thanked you for accepting your position as my knight,” Erwin breathed—his father and his council were still watching them.

“There’s no need to thank me,” Levi murmured. “I didn’t do it for you.”

“I know,” Erwin said. “But I know now that I need you far more than I realized then.”

Something flashed in Levi’s eyes, like the way the crystal drink glasses caught the lighting of the chandeliers above.

After his dance with Levi, Erwin danced with no one else. The night passed in eyes watching them and cordial words spoken between himself and the soldiers around. The kings both rose and gave a speech, preparing the men in the room for war, preparing them for death, and their words ended with raised glasses and a roar that belted from the mouths of the soldiers in the hall, that echoed and bounced between the pillars and the walls and the windows and neither Hange, Erwin, nor Levi, joined in.

Just as Erwin wondered once more if his father knew, his father, at the end of his speech, caught his gaze from across the hall, all hope of victory gone from his eyes, the fight from his lips, and he looked at Erwin with the grave face of a damned man, and nodded. Erwin’s eyes burned and he nodded, too, before he downed the rest of his drink—of course his father knew. Of course his father had known, probably since the day the queen hadn’t come back. Erwin knew that he needed to talk to his father, whether it be late that night or early the next morning—his father was no doubt occupied with his council for the next few hours.

Pairs began to disappear. Soldiers and their partners disappeared from the hall, to find an abandoned corridor in the castle. When the room was sparse, Erwin, Hange, and Levi left, too, showing Hange first to their room (they were to stay the night and, once Yalkell and Stohess left for war the next morning, they would return home.) At their door, Erwin took their hand once more and kissed their knuckles with quiet words of a good night. Hange returned the sentiment to both him and Levi and slipped silently into their room—once the door had closed behind them, Erwin went to his own quarters, Levi in step beside him. They quietly passed a couple pinned to a corner in one of the lower corridors.

Once outside his quarters, Erwin held the heavy door open for Levi, who passed close and electric and into the large room. Erwin followed him and the door shut loudly behind him—the click of his lock was even louder and rang in his ears long after. Levi stopped several steps away, in the vacant space between the door and Erwin’s bed, and turned halfway on his heel, showing the sheath of his sword to Erwin in full. It sat long and cocked over his hip and thigh, and he watched Erwin from over his shoulder, his pale skin yellowed in the glow of the lantern that a servant must have lit in their absence. Night outside the window was black.

“What a form of propaganda,” Levi murmured critically and Erwin looked down the curve of his back, down the tailored line of his jacket that followed it close.

“The soldiers need hope,” Erwin said and met Levi’s stare.

“That was not hope. They’re not stupid, they know that this night means they’re about to die. That was rallying them to blind obedience. One last night to ensure that they’ll follow their king to their deaths.”

Erwin was quiet for a moment. His head felt a little foggy with his drinks of the evening—he wondered if Levi, if the other soldiers, felt it, too. “There’s nothing wrong with dying for something that you believe in,” he said after a moment, his eyes caught on the lantern’s highlight over the curve of Levi’s throat.

“There is,” Levi said quietly. “Especially if what you believe in is wrong, or a lie, or just stupid.”

“Can you think of anything that you would die for?” Erwin asked.

“No,” Levi said quickly, too quickly, and Erwin didn’t believe him. Then again, quieter, and after some contemplation, “No.” The word stuck to the air around them.

Erwin stepped forward, away from the door. The soft tick of his boots against the hard floor dropped upon the stillness of the room like pebbles in water and Levi didn’t move, not as Erwin stepped closer, closer, until he stood near Levi’s shoulder. Levi’s eyes were a firm and dark gray in the low lighting, his hair a black deeper than the night outside, and he never looked away from Erwin, never once, never once faltered.

He was stone, unbreakable and merciless, and exactly what Erwin needed, and exactly what Erwin had because Levi was his, his knight, his fight—Levi had been since that day in the alleyway, when he stood behind Erwin with a hand in his hair and a knife to his throat.

And here they were, over a year later, and Erwin slowly dropped to one knee, placed one hand over the left side of his chest, and bowed his head. The motion, of utmost devotion and trust, made him warmer in his clothes, inside himself, and he drew in a slow, quiet breath through his nose.

“Thank you,” he said, and wondered what Levi looked like above him, but he didn’t raise his head to see.

“I told you,” Levi said, his voice rougher than Erwin remembered, “you don’t need to thank me. I didn’t do it for you.” He said this again.

“And I told you that I know,” Erwin murmured. He stared down at Levi’s black, leather boots, the dull and flat shine of the lantern over his toe.

“Then why are you doing it?”

Erwin licked his lips. “I want to.”

From somewhere above him, Levi scoffed, though there was no bite behind it. “That’s funny,” he said. “A prince who wants to kneel.”

Erwin lifted his gaze, looked up Levi’s body, and murmured, “I don’t kneel for anyone.”

The words struck something inside Levi—Erwin saw it in his eyes, something dark like the warmth that simmered just beneath Erwin’s skin as he remained still, upon his knees. The floor, unforgiving beneath him, reminded him of the gravel beneath his knees in that alley. Then Levi turned, his boots scuffing quietly, towards Erwin, and pushed his fingers slowly, resolutely, through Erwin’s hair, pulling it loose. Erwin closed his eyes and parted his lips, just enough to breathe out from between them. He opened his eyes again when Levi’s palm had fit itself against his scalp, and Levi looked near intoxicated.

“No?” Levi breathed. “Looks like you’re enjoying it.”

“I don’t kneel for anyone,” Erwin said again, his voice sounding distant to even himself, “except for you.”

“A prince,” Levi said and curled his fingers tight in Erwin’s hair. “On his knees.”

Then Erwin stood, slowly, and stepped once more, closer yet, to kiss Levi’s lips. Levi’s lips parted against his, hot and bitter like the evening’s drinks, and his fingers kept themselves tangled in Erwin’s hair. A flush rose high in Erwin’s cheeks and he clutched the lapel of Levi’s jacket, held him like he’d run of he let go—but Levi wouldn’t run, Erwin knew this, because Levi was his, his, his.

“I need to go,” Erwin breathed distantly, as if his words were a passing thought that fell forgotten into Levi’s mouth, “I’ll be back later, I need to go talk to my father.” Levi stole the rest of his breath from his lips.

“Fine,” Levi grunted, and Erwin pulled back. The kiss left his skin warm all over, from the tips of his ears to his toes, and Levi didn’t let go, not until Erwin took a couple steps back. Levi stood, as composed as ever, watching Erwin with blown pupils, fit neatly and perfectly into his unhindered jacket and pants, and he looked the opposite of how Erwin felt. Erwin wondered if Levi felt it too: a pounding heart, a humid warmth that stuck to his skin.

“I need to go,” Erwin said again as he drew closer to the door. He turned and left, closed the door loudly behind him, and he paused outside, his fingers trembling upon the doorknob, and drew in a slow, deep breath, realizing only then how hot the air in his room had become. Then he set off down the corridor, towards his father’s quarters, his foot falls like claps that echoed between the empty walls.

 

 

“Thatcher and I are going into town today,” Levi said at sunrise, only moments after Erwin had opened his eyes for the day. The day: the eighth day since Stohess and Yalkell had left to meet Trost at the plains.

The sun reached across the ceiling of Erwin’s quarters, bright and white, and Erwin squinted. “What?” he rasped, his mouth dry, and he licked his lips. He felt heavy upon his bed, his muscles aching and lagging and bruised from last night and the six nights before that; the troops went to war and he and Levi spent hours upon hours every night sparring between the trees in the back courtyard. His right thigh in particular kept him anchored to his bed, remembering the way Levi had kicked him just above the knee and set him crashing to the ground.

Beside the bed, Levi had already begun to dress in a pair of brown pants and one of his plainer button-downs. Erwin caught the briefest sight of the purple bruises over his torso. “Thatcher and I are going into town,” he said again as he straightened and his fingers worked up the buttons of his shirt.

With a tired groan, Erwin carefully propped himself up on his hands. “Why?”

“I have an errand to run.” Levi smoothed his fingers down the front of his shirt.

Erwin cocked an eyebrow, blinking himself further into clarity. “What errand? I didn’t ask you to run an errand.”

Levi tipped his head back as he fixed the collar of his shirt, stared down his cheeks at Erwin. “I need to check something,” he said, with mild irritation.

“Fine,” Erwin said. “Then I’m coming with you.”

The line of Levi’s mouth tightened and Erwin watched him, blinked again, and rolled his shoulders back to stretch them. “Fine,” Levi agreed shortly. He then turned and approached his boots, which stood beneath his clothes in his half of the closet. “I knew I should have left earlier.”

Erwin scoffed. “Good luck leaving the grounds without me at your side,” he said. “The council has tightened the guard schedule ever since my father left. And they don’t trust you any further than they can see.”

Levi crouched and, with his back to Erwin, the hint of a grin curled in the corners of his lips. “You say that like they trust you,” he said, and Erwin looked towards the daylight, squinted as he grinned, too.

As they had known, guards patrolled every corridor in heightened numbers; Erwin and Levi were never outside of their sight. Erwin knew that the schedule that he and Mike had memorized was now useless, that there was no sneaking around the guards (they had even descended the back staircase which, usually vacant, now had two guards at both openings). No, they couldn’t go around the guards, so they had no choice but to go through them.

The crimson rug that stretched the length of the foyer, leading from the castle’s front door and down the main floor hallway, muffled Erwin’s footfalls as he passed through the hallway, through the foyer, past the main staircases and towards the front door, towards the two guards that stood at either side of it. His blade sat snug and holstered at his side; Levi kept close behind him, his green-handled sword cocked upon his hip.

He stopped when one of the guards held out his hand, just before Erwin reached the front door. Levi stopped just beside his right soldier. “My apologies, sir, but I must ask where you will be going,” the guard said, his lips barely moving, so as to not disturb the helmet that framed his face.

“Town,” Erwin said easily. “We have a couple errands to run.”

The guard visibly winced. “I must apologize again, sir, but I am under strict orders to not let you leave the castle without an escort.”

Erwin cocked an eyebrow and glanced over his soldier towards Levi, who eyed the guard with disdain. “He is my knight,” Erwin said as if it were obvious, and looked once more at the guard. “He is all the escort I need.”

“I am aware of who he is, sire, however—”

The guard’s words stopped short and Erwin heard his breath hitch; Levi had, in a swift and unseen moment, drawn his sword and now held the edge of his blade close to the guard’s throat. The guard’s hand had instinctively clutched the handle of his sword, but something stopped him from withdrawing it, and he instead bared his teeth and stared at Levi with wide eyes. The other guard seemed to have the same predicament, clearly unsure of what to do, as he had darted closer, ready to help, but with Erwin in such proximity, he, too, seemed hesitant to draw his sword. Erwin noted this, noted the traces of loyalty it implied.

“You will let us through,” Levi hissed.

“We will be back before they know we’re gone,” Erwin added quietly, making certain that he sounded like he believed his words, though he didn’t. Both of the guards looked his way. They stared, thinking and afraid, and Erwin continued, calmly, “and if we’re not, you haven’t seen us.” Levi didn’t relent, his blade sharp and unyielding and near to the guard’s throat, and Erwin glanced at him, briefly, wondered why he was so eager to get into town.

“Y-Yes, sire,” the guard stammered and only when he set his hand upon the door knob did Levi withdraw, though not entirely, not until the door was open for them. He re-sheathed his sword, though the guards didn’t relax. They instead stiffened their posture and bowed their heads towards Erwin.

“Thank you,” Erwin murmured and slipped out the door, Levi right behind him. He closed the large door behind them as quietly as he could, but the sound was no smaller than a distant rumble of thunder, and he couldn’t help but wince.

Neither of them spoke until they had crossed the bright courtyard and reached the stables—then, with a quiet hint of complacency, Levi muttered as they passed through the long aisle of horses, “So I’m the one who wouldn’t be able to get anywhere without you?”

Erwin scoffed again. “They would have killed you on the spot had I not been there.”

“I would have liked to see them try.”

Erwin licked his lower lip, glanced briefly at Levi from the corner of his eye.

He stopped before he reached Beauty, touching the nose of one of the brown, military horses, the one he usually rode into town—Arrow, he believed. He stroked the white stripe that ran down the horse’s nose before he opened the door to his stall. As he finished equipping Arrow with his saddle, Levi and Thatcher stopped beside them in the aisle, waiting.

“Beauty’s jealous,” Levi said quietly, without humor in his voice or his expression. Erwin looked up, found Levi watching him, Thatcher’s reigns twisted around his left hand. Thatcher shook his head and Erwin smiled wryly.

“She’s used to it,” he said and tested the security of the saddle. Satisfied, he led the horse out of its stall, its shoes clicking over the stable floor and crunching stray bits of hay. “I never bring her into town. She draws too much attention.

Levi cocked an eyebrow. “You think you’re the only one with a white horse?”

“No,” Erwin said easily, “but there are far more brown horses, and it’s best not to draw any attention to myself if I can help it.” He looked down the line of horses and found Beauty watching them.

“See, she’s jealous,” Levi said indignantly, watching her, too, and Erwin smiled wider.

Their ride into town grew warm. Erwin’s dark shirt and pants held the sun’s heat close to his arms and legs; his boots kept it close to his feet. Levi and Thatcher rode beside him and, as they drew nearer to the bustling town and the noise of Stohess’ patrons grew louder, Erwin pulled his hood up over his head—out of habit more than anything; Levi’s sword was far too intricate to pass for a lower class sword. His hood didn’t help with the heat and he touched his fingers briefly to his sticky forehead.

“Don’t bother,” Levi grunted, the first words he had spoken since they left the royal grounds. Erwin looked at him sideways, found him staring straight ahead, towards the approaching commotion of the town, his body shifting and rocking subtly in anticipation of Thatcher’s movements. His shoulders were hunched forward. “If all goes right, we won’t even make it into town.”

“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?” Erwin asked quietly, drawing his horse a bit closer to Levi’s to better hear him. Arrow huffed a sound and his ears twitched.

Levi acknowledged Erwin from the corner of his eye, as if that was the answer to his question. Then he stopped, Erwin forgotten, and he stared up, towards the tops of the brick buildings that had grown larger, closer, and Erwin stopped as well. He watched Levi, didn’t bother to follow Levi’s gaze, he watched his knight silently, his shoulders rigid and ready.

Levi’s eyes narrowed in the daylight, the slope of his nose and the shape of his cheek caught in the sun’s glow. The way his dark hair sat still upon his head only served to remind Erwin that the air around them was stagnant, hot, and drawing sweat to Erwin’s skin.

Wordlessly, Levi turned away from Erwin, and he and Thatcher held their leisurely pace, now walking beside the town, following its line of buildings. Erwin kept close, his horse’s head bobbing, and Erwin left his hood up as they passed a pair of guards that stood just inside the town’s borders. Levi led Thatcher into a thin crowd of people, weaving between them, blending with them—though some automatically veered away from Levi and the sword at his hip—and Erwin followed.

Levi led them towards the south side of town, though he kept to the outskirts, to the paths overgrown with weeds and grass, to the abandoned and worn down buildings with cracked windows and crumbling bricks. Erwin looked around as they went, only briefly, before he focused again on the way Levi’s shirt folded and caved to his shoulder blades.

The people around them grew more and more sparse, the broken down buildings more and more frequent, and Erwin’s heartbeat picked up, his fingers tightening around the horse’s reigns, but still he followed Levi, still he kept close to his knight, though he felt much like he had that day, that first day, when he and Mike had chased after a drug cartel.

Trees began to join the buildings, and Levi stopped. He looked at Erwin from over his shoulder, watched him quietly—or so Erwin thought, but at some point, he realized that Levi was looking past him, behind him. Erwin pushed his hood from his head and turned, too, and saw someone riding towards them quickly, the only person that Erwin could see through the trees.

“You know, I almost can’t believe you’re alive,” someone said, someone who wasn’t Levi, and when Erwin turned forward again, he found Levi dismounted, found someone blond and familiar standing in the empty doorway of a building that looked much like a rotten pumpkin.

“Fuck off,” Levi said as he approached the blond and realization struck Erwin only a moment later—Farlan. “I told you I’d be back, didn’t I?” Levi cringed when Farlan sat his hand upon Levi’s head, turned away from Erwin to hide the smallest smile that peeked through the corners of his lips.

Farlan looked up at Erwin, who sat upon his horse, who thought briefly of running, who thought that perhaps Levi had betrayed him after all, that he had followed his knight right into an ambush. But Farlan watched him without malice, without much of anything, really, and, after a moment, nodded to Erwin.

A horse’s footfalls were heavy and like thunder behind Erwin, quick and sudden, and Erwin barely had time to look over his shoulder once more before the horse and its rider were at his side, a blade swift and threatening at his throat, and Erwin’s hand immediately went to the blade holstered at his side, though he didn’t draw it, not upon seeing Isabel. She leaned off of her horse, towards Erwin, her eyes bright and dangerous, and her red bangs stuck to her damp forehead.

“Fucker,” she breathed, “I knew it was you, you fucking liar—”

“Isabel,” Levi said, and jerked the reigns of Isabel’s horse, away from Erwin. She grunted as the motion threw her off balance, and Erwin exhaled slowly. “Stop, you don’t need to do that.”

“Of course I do, he’s the one who ratted us out—” she stopped short and stared at Levi, as if she had never seen him before, and her arms fell limp at her sides, the blade clutched in her fingers. She sat silent for a long moment before she abruptly dropped the knife and slid from the horse, landing upon the grass with a quiet thud. She then threw her arms around Levi, clinging to him, and she said something into his neck, but Erwin couldn’t hear. After a tentative moment, Levi wrapped his arms around her, too, held her and Erwin looked away, feeling as if he was intruding.

“You stayed alive, big brother,” Isabel said and then laughed. “You actually listened to us, for once, and stayed alive.”

Levi didn’t say anything; Erwin imagined that he rolled his eyes.

“Isabel, where did you get the horse?” Farlan asked.

“It doesn’t matter. I saw Levi and he saw me and I knew I needed to get back as fast as I could,” Isabel said. “It’s ours now.”

A pointed silence tensed between them, and Erwin felt as if it was an invitation back into the conversation. Sure enough, all three were watching him, Farlan as if he was trying to figure him out, Isabel as if she was trying to figure out how to get away with killing him.

“What is he doing here?” Isabel said quietly after a moment, her voice a thin hiss. It was a question, but her voice sounded as if she knew the answer, as if she knew what had happened—after all, who didn’t. She looked at Levi expectantly, then stepped back, really looked at Levi, his clothes, his sword.

“A knight won’t go anywhere without his prince,” Farlan said, quietly.

“You told me to stay alive,” Levi murmured. “So I did.”

“Maybe we should talk inside,” Farlan proposed and stepped back into the dilapidated building. Carefully, Erwin dismounted and followed Levi inside. Isabel, as a second thought, retrieved her blade from the ground, and did the same.

The inside of the single-room building was far cleaner than Erwin expected. Sure, the wood of the floor had softened and the furnishings were modest to say the least, but nothing seemed dirty. The brick walls were clean, the glass of the single window at the back seemed untouched, and the various cooking utensils sat neatly upon the table in the corner. Three mats were rolled tightly and stacked precisely in the corner. The day served as the only light inside the building, spreading over most of the room, except for the furthest corners.

“We kept the place clean,” Isabel explained as Erwin looked around, “because we knew you’d be back.”

“Well, we had at least hoped,” Farlan said with a small grin. He then looked at Erwin and asked casually, “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, thank you,” Erwin said quietly. Simultaneously, Isabel and Levi sat on two of three cushions near the rolled up mats. Levi drew his knees to his chest and looked at Erwin, watched him, until Erwin slowly approached the pair and took a careful, tentative seat upon the wooden floor, across from Levi. Isabel watched him and Erwin felt the suspicion and distrust in her gaze as she pushed her bangs away from her forehead. It seemed even warmer inside the building.

“What’s it like being a knight?” Isabel eventually asked as Farlan sat upon the open cushion.

Erwin saw the contemplation passing back and forth in Levi’s eyes. “I think that I’ve become a part of something bigger than I expected,” Levi answered after a moment, his lips barely moving around the words. “That’s part of why I wanted to visit today.”

“Why didn’t you come sooner?” Isabel asked, her voice firm, nearly demanding. “Farlan and I weren’t sure that you were alive.”

Levi’s eyes shifted and he looked at her. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t think I’d be able to get away with it. And I was afraid that someone would follow us here.”

Erwin instinctively glanced over his shoulder, towards the open door.

“And even now, we shouldn’t stay long,” Levi added. Neither Isabel nor Farlan said anything to that—Farlan watched Levi and Isabel watched her hands, which lay palm up in her lap. Something akin to guilt settled thick in Erwin’s gut.

“How do you know that he didn’t lead the guards to us that day?” Isabel asked quietly after a long pause, her voice distant, heavy. “How do you know you can trust him?” She then looked up at Erwin, her eyes narrow, dark, critical in a way that Erwin was not used to, in a way that left him feeling hollow. “He almost killed us once, how do you know he won’t do it again?”

“Because he’s a target,” Levi murmured.

Erwin stopped breathing.

“The crown is our enemy, but it’s also his,” Levi said, his eyes fixed upon Erwin, and the way he spoke made Erwin feel as if there was something more to his words, something more that he didn’t say. “The king has been sent to his death and the prince will be next.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Farlan uttered beneath his breath.

“The king’s council is taking over,” Erwin said quietly, and the words stuck to his tongue, a biting taste in his mouth. “They’ve been manipulating the crown for years, decades maybe, and when the royal family dies out—all by accident, of course, by no act of treason—they will rule.”

“They already do,” Levi murmured, but Erwin felt far away, isolated by realization, by the years that finally made sense, by the way everything, everything, seemed to fall into place.

“Everybody wants to rule the world.” Erwin wasn’t sure of who said that.

Isabel cleared her throat, pushed her bangs again from her sticky forehead, and the motion reminded Erwin of his own clothes clinging to his skin. He shifted and breathed deeply, trying to calm the angry beating of his heart.

“It won’t be long before riots break out,” Isabel said. “The royal guards have multiplied and they’re now on every street corner, keeping everyone quiet and in line, but it will only work for so long. People are getting antsy, and they’re wondering why they’re still starving, why the guards and the crown haven’t done anything yet. They’re getting angry.”

“If the king falls,” Farlan mused quietly, staring down at the cracks in the floor boards beneath them, “that may stave off the riots, at least for a short period of time. Surely everyone thinks the living conditions are his doing, not the council’s. But when nothing changes, or if things get worse, a civil war could break out.”

“Things will change,” Erwin said with a level and confident voice that surprised even himself, and Farlan looked at him from the corner of his eye. He swallowed and looked across the circle again at Levi, who was still watching him. “If the king falls, things will change.”

A silent moment passed, expectant and incomplete, until Levi moved his head in the slightest nod, just enough for Erwin to see it.

Before they left, Farlan passed a small, leather pouch to Levi. “Here’s a good high for you. For old time’s sake,” he said, with a crooked grin, and, this time, Erwin caught sight of Levi’s smile.

On the eighth night of Sina’s war with Trost, news arrived, ahead of the retreating troops. The king of Stohess had fallen. Erwin stood small in the castle’s large foyer, Levi to his left and the royal council to his right, and listened to the news. Listened with his jaw tilted his up, his shoulders straight, and eyes, one by one, fell upon him. He did not dare let them see the way his throat swelled, the way his heart quivered and the way his fingers itched with malicious intent, with the temptation of revenge—he could kill them, kill them all, right here and right now.

Outside, the bell bellowed distantly, and Erwin felt it strike through him, vibrate through his bones.

Beside him, Levi touched the green handle of his sword.

 

 

“I think I’m dying,” Erwin said, or he thought he did, or perhaps he didn’t. He could barely breathe, much less speak, and there was blood, so much blood, pouring from his arm, wet and warm over his skin, beneath the stained cloth of his jacket. His legs, bent beneath him upon the floor, had fallen numb, and everything was loud around him, the clash of swords, the cries of dead men, of men who were afraid, and the sounds were close, closer, until they were inside him, aching and splitting through his head.

Everything, everything was heavy, and his shoulders slumped forward, towards the floor, and he wanted to fall forward, to lay down, but he couldn’t because Levi was there, spread out on the floor in front of him. He didn’t want to hurt his knight, didn’t want to disturb him.

His blood pooled in his palm and dripped from his fingers, onto the floor, onto the shoulder of Levi’s jacket, staining the white cloth.

“Sorry,” Erwin said, or he thought he did, or perhaps he didn’t.

There was blood, so much blood.

Someone touched him, wrapped an arm around him, and lifted him, freeing him from the pull of the floor. He looked sideways and found Hange, their dark hair matted with blood, their breathing heavy, their lips red, very red.

“We have to get out of here,” they said, urgently, and Erwin felt as if he had just woke from a long sleep. “You need to get out of here, you need to live, do you hear me?”

Erwin’s right arm hung limp, wet, useless at his side. He drew in a sharp, deep breath, and he saw the bodies around them, the swords, the pooling blood.

“This war is not over,” Hange said, loudly, louder than the other sounds around them, but Levi did not seem to hear them, or anything—he was still, his hair dark and spread over his forehead, his lips parted and red and close to Erwin’s boots. Erwin did not know why, but his eyes began to burn, until it hurt to keep them open and he closed his eyes for a moment.

“Erwin, stay with me,” Hange’s voice was close, now a hiss, and Erwin opened his eyes again, found everything blurred. He blinked, blinked, blinked and things were once more in focus. Hange’s eyes, a deep green, were close to his. Then, with his free hand, Hange yanked the white scarf from their throat and tied it tight around Erwin’s right bicep.

“Let’s go,” they said, and they were gone, leaving Erwin swaying and joining the sounds around them, the mess that had erupted in Erwin’s life, and Erwin paused, felt a fire igniting bright and hungry inside him. He leaned over, took Levi’s sword from his cold hand.

He realized then that he, too, had blood on his lips, in his mouth, bitter and metallic over his tongue, pink over his teeth.

The sword was heavy and clumsy in Erwin’s left hand, but he, too, joined the mess, and fought for his life.

 

 

His family crest was embroidered into the long, red rug that stretched the foyer, from the front door and down the hall, splitting two ways and following the dual staircases up to the second level. The crest, a silver serpent coiled in the hollow center of a crown, both surrounded by the leaves of laurel wreathes, sat large at the split of the rug, right between the two staircases.

Erwin stood at his father’s side, his small feet positioned right beneath the crown. He eyed the crest, then looked up at his father; when he stood up straight, he only stood as tall as his father’s ribs.

“Why a snake?” Erwin asked. “What about a lion? Or a horse?”

His father turned his head and looked down at him from beneath the frame of his glasses, a small smile on his face. “Many crests are made of lions and horses. But the snake is a well-rounded warrior, Erwin. A lion and a horse can rely on their size and strength to help them win battles. But the snake, as it is small and not as strong as its larger opponents, must use more tactical methods to win. It has its strength, but it must rely also on speed and strategy.”

“Oh,” Erwin said quietly and looked down at the crest again. He lifted his foot and touched the toe of his shoe to the edge of the crown. “That makes sense.”

“Strength may be the easiest and most direct way to win wars,” his father said, “but that does not mean it is the best.”

“The crown isn’t just about winning battles, though,” Erwin objected and looked up again at his father, who was still looking at him. “What about its people? Is a snake really the best ruler and protector for everyone else?”

Erwin’s father didn’t answer for a long moment—for so long that Erwin wondered if he had asked a bad question. He stared up at his father with wide eyes, noticed that his father was no longer smiling. Then, finally, his father set a gentle hand in his blond hair.

“What makes you think it’s not?” he asked gently.

Erwin blinked, didn’t respond. He didn’t really have a concrete answer.

“The snake, though small and often mistrusted,” his father went on, “can be very wise and an exceptional listener. And the way it fights in battles will help it lead its people; you cannot rule a kingdom with strength alone, Erwin. Your people must grow to trust you and trust that you will make the right decisions as a leader. And, in order to do that, you need to be able to think clearly, no matter the circumstances. You need to be able to weigh consequences against each other—more often than not, there will not be a right answer and there will not be a wrong answer. And a leader needs to be able to make those decisions. Practiced with strategy, a snake is a perfect candidate to do so.”

Erwin, once more looked at the snake, the way its body spiraled from the center of the crown. “Okay,” he said quietly after a moment.

 

 

The morning of his father’s funeral was gray. It tentatively shone itself through the window and into Erwin’s quarters, a sort of haze that lingered over the floor, across the bed. Erwin woke in its silence, his eyes opening slowly, reluctantly, and he stared up at the ceiling, up at its embossed shapes, twists and lines and Erwin had never been able to make sense of it.

His gaze slid to the corner of his eyes and he found his knight, sitting up in bed, watching him. One of Levi’s leg was bent beneath the white sheets of his bed, the fabric draping over his knee and falling leisurely over his leg. It bunched at his hips. His loose night shirt hung from his shoulders, showing the shadows in the dips of his collar bones.

They stared at each other, the silver morning light passing between them, and neither of them said anything.

And Erwin, once more, was grateful that Levi was there.

During the funeral, Levi stood at Erwin’s right, Mike stood at his left. Across the aisle, Hange stood with their brother and a portion of Yalkell’s military. They all watched, from the front pew, as uniformed soldiers marched down the long aisle of the chapel, assembled in two, longer lines, marching in step with each other. The lines parted, one light turning left, the other turning right, once they reached the chancel, and they kept coming and coming, kept marching like a soft, steady, heartbeat, and Erwin counted the steps out in his head. The soldiers filtered in until, near the back of the lines, came the soldiers carrying the casket, the large, polished casket, and they, instead of following the other soldiers, ascended the chancel’s steps and lowered the casket before the altar.

Erwin watched as the ceremony continued, his heartbeat dull and unlike the soldiers’ footsteps, and he listened as the priest spoke words over his father’s closed casket; he had seen this, he had heard this, once before.

The council stood in the pew behind him, but he knew they weren’t watching the ceremony—they had, after all, seen this once before, too. They were watching him. Everyone, even the priest, was watching him, their eyes falling upon him expectantly, their new king, and he felt them all around him. The burning curiosity upon the straight line of his shoulders, the stiffness of his back, the tension in his curled fingers, all of them wondering, wondering what he was going to do next.

Levi’s elbow touched his and the soldiers that had carried the king’s casket drew their swords, lifted them and crossed them above the king’s casket in a salute, but only briefly, before the priest draped a red flag over the casket, embroidered with the royal crest.

 

 

Rain poured cold over Erwin’s head, into his hair, down his face, over his parted lips. A few steps away, he could see Levi’s shape, the darkest part of the night around him, could see the shine of Levi’s sword in the glint of moonlight that had found the smallest cracks between the rain clouds, could see the way the rain bounced off of its blade. Erwin’s sword was dark in his own hands, its red hilt caught tight in his damp palms.

The funeral for Erwin’s father had ended several hours ago; Erwin had watched the visitors leave through the hissing rain, hoods drawn, watched them until they disappeared into the fog of the gray evening.

Levi moved, Erwin saw his shadow move and disappear into the color of the trees around them, and he twisted right, lifting his sword, and catching Levi’s attack with a bright sound. The moonlight disappeared once more, and Erwin’s breathing picked up, loud in his ears, and someone’s boot squeaked as it slid over the wet grass. Erwin could feel Levi close and around him, and he turned again, lunging to strike Levi, but he missed.

From the darkness, Levi abruptly caught his thigh with the butt of his sword and he gritted his teeth, his knee nearly buckling with the pain. He twisted again on his toe and stepped back, stepping from the fury, and his skin felt feverish under his chilled shirt. It stuck to him, a second skin, and Erwin stepped forward again, swung an attack, which he missed, twisted and tried again—again, missed. He attacked, attacked, attacked, tried without avail to find Levi in the shadows of the night.

Rain pounded on his head, rushing over him. His breathing rasped in his throat, his lungs feeling tight and hot, everything of him was hot and he lunged again, again, and Levi’s blade caught his back, slashing a biting line across his spine and Erwin groaned with the pain. But still he turned and threw himself forward, towards Levi, or where Levi had been, and his movements were swift but clumsy, without their usual poise and precision.

But he wouldn’t stop. Levi was all around him, everywhere that he wasn’t, and he lashed out, his teeth bared, his heart brash and thunderous inside him, still unlike the beat, beat, beat of soldiers’ footsteps across the chapel floor.

Levi caught his other thigh and his knees faltered, only momentarily. Still, he remained standing and switched his sword to his left hand, again striking at the night, only to have his blade pierce the thin shapes of raindrops. The rain roared around them, dousing the leaves and trunks of trees, and Erwin swallowed the rainwater that had fallen onto his tongue. It ran cold down his burning throat, did nothing to refresh him, and he turned, twisted, lashed, again, once more, then again, grunts grinding out from between his teeth, and exhaustion began to weigh in his bones, but he ignored it. He ignored the crippling sting spreading up his spine, ignored the ache in his thighs, the temptation to fall to his knees, to the ground, and bury his face in the grass.

“Erwin,” said Levi close to his ear, and Erwin whipped around, towards the voice, darted forward, found nothing, and perhaps he had imagined Levi all along, perhaps Levi was no more than a hope, a coping mechanism.

But sure as the rain falling onto his head, Levi’s sword again caught him, this time across the thigh, slashing through his doused slacks, and this time Erwin did fall. His knees crumpled beneath him and he fell like a tree onto the grass, the ground wet and sticky and cold beneath him, and Erwin shuddered. He panted heavily, fell forward onto his hands, the hilt of his sword pinned between his palm and the grass.

Was he bleeding? He couldn’t tell.

Was he crying?

His eyes burned hot and he closed them tightly, he felt as if he was choking—was he even breathing?

The rain pounded over him, striking against the wound across his back. He groaned, opened his eyes, and tears fell from them, pooling hot in the corners of his eyes, and he couldn’t see the ground beneath him.

Levi set his hands carefully over Erwin’s head and Erwin realized then how badly he was shaking. Then he felt Levi’s head rest against his, barely shielding him from the rain, and Erwin lifted his hand from his sword, reached out and touched Levi’s thigh, his pants soaked through with rain.

“Things will change,” Levi murmured, and Erwin just barely heard him over the rush of rain, over his rigid breathing, over the beat of his heart.

Erwin reached up and clutched the collar of Levi’s shirt with his shaking fingers.

“We’re going to kill them,” he breathed, his voice shaking and hiccupping and the tears didn’t stop falling from his eyes. “We’re going to fight.”

“We’re going to fight,” Levi agreed, his voice low, and Erwin remembered that day, years ago now, in the alley, when Levi had looked at him with a fire in his eyes.

 

 

Erwin stepped slowly down the aisle, following the red carpet that had been laid out in front of him, the carpet that led him straight to the king’s throne. Every step ached, reminding him of the bruises and bandages on his thighs. He stared ahead as he went, his eyes fixed upon the red cushions and the twisting legs of the throne. The king’s robe was heavy on his shoulders as he went, the fall of his boots muffled by the carpet, leaving the room silent, breathless.

He passed soldiers in his military, he passed his father’s knights, passed several council members, and their eyes followed him, measured every step that took. Erwin kept his jaw set and did not look at them, did not look at anyone until he passed Levi, the last person he passed on his way to the throne. His eyes caught Levi’s, who looked at him from the corner of his eye.

The throne room could hold only a handful of people, but Erwin knew that, outside, lined behind the castle’s gates, stood the hundreds upon hundreds of Stohess’ citizens, all silent, all waiting for him to take the throne.

He ascended the steps to his throne, turned, faced them all, but stared over them, towards the door through which he had come. Slowly, carefully, he bent his knees, lowered himself. He exhaled slowly through his nose, rested his hands over the arms of the throne, sat straight upon the chair, and felt as if he hadn’t breathed since he entered the room. He kept his back straight, so as to not disrupt the wound Levi had left over his spine.

The oldest councilman, old and gray, stood beside him and he said, with authority, “The thirteenth king of Stohess, descendent of the royal line, Erwin Smith.” Then he set the king’s crown, upon Erwin’s head, and it rested heavy over his scalp.

Erwin glanced sideways, only briefly, at the councilman, and imagined the snap of his neck.

The councilman then left his side, descended the steps, and took his place beside the other councilmembers. Simultaneously, the room fell, its occupants dropping slowly to one knee before Erwin, showing him the tops of their heads, all of them except for Levi, who did kneel, who did set his hand over his heart, but never once did his eyes leave Erwin’s. Something inside Erwin’s chest swelled and, from his place upon his throne, he watched his knight.

Outside, the bell rang once more, and all of Stohess fell to their knees.

 

 

Nights became sleepless. Both Erwin and Levi kept their swords sheathed beside their bed as they laid awake through the slow, eventless hours of night; the council had not made a move yet. Neither of them tossed or turned very much, they instead preferred to lay upon the bed as stagnant as the darkness outside the window, but when they did, their toes would occasionally graze the other’s calf, their arms would often touch the other’s side, fingers over fingers. Only when this happened did Erwin realize how close they now slept, how they no longer glued themselves to the opposite ends of the bed.

A couple months into Erwin’s kingship, Erwin spent the hours of the night examining the jagged line of a scar that marred Levi’s skin, that peeked out from the collar of his night shirt and curled at the top notch of his spine. He laid upon his stomach on the bed, his eyelids heavy, his lips parted, his body simmering in a sort of near-sleep state, and eyed the white scar tissue, pale and translucent in the center of Levi’s back, as if it had cut him in two.

The moonlight seemed to reflect from it, and Erwin’s fingers were loose and relaxed upon the bed—his mind wanted to touch, but his hand would not move, so he instead imagined the smooth skin beneath his fingertips, how it would feel.

Then Levi shifted, rocking the bed beneath them, and the movement pulled Erwin from his stupor. Erwin blinked and shuddered as Levi’s toes touched his knee. Levi did not turn to face him and, once Levi had settled again, Erwin lifted his hand, reached out and pressed his thumb gently against the scar upon Levi’s back. He felt Levi bristle, perhaps out of instinct, his shoulders raised, and Erwin waited until the tension slowly bled from Levi before he traced the rigid line with his thumb.

The scar tissue, as he had imagined, was smooth, but much more like Levi’s skin than he had thought; he twisted his thumb, so that it straddled the scar and Levi’s unblemished skin, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell the difference with his eyes closed.

He heard Levi’s breathing deepen in the silence of the room. He listened, slowing his own breathing to match Levi’s, before he set his index fingertip down upon Levi’s skin as well. The sound of Levi’s breathing disappeared, but Levi didn’t cringe this time, so Erwin set his middle finger down as well, then his ring, his pinky, until he had spread his fingers across the scar on Levi’s back.

“Do you remember,” he started quietly, pressed his palm down onto Levi’s skin, and his fingertips slipped beneath the cloth of Levi’s shirt, “that night when you tried to kill me?”

“I do,” Levi murmured, but nothing of him moved. Erwin felt the words vibrate in Levi’s body, far beneath his skin.

“When I woke to you above me, holding a knife to my throat?”

“I do.”

A loaded silence, Erwin didn’t dare to breathe. He then shifted forward, carefully, and he slipped his foot between Levi’s calves, rested his leg between Levi’s, and ducked his head to press his lips to the back of Levi’s neck. Levi’s body went taut again, but he didn’t move. Erwin exhaled a slow breath that seeped hot over Levi’s skin, his hand now running over Levi’s shirt and over the tension in his shoulder blades.

Neither of them said anything and Erwin pressed kisses to the back of Levi’s neck, and his skin grew hot, humid beneath the bed sheets. Levi’s skin was warm and near to his own, and he wanted Levi closer, perhaps impossibly close. But he kept the space between them, kept his lips upon Levi’s back, his fingers over Levi’s back, his ankle hooked in Levi’s calves. He kept his distance and inhaled, breathed Levi in.

“Do you remember,” Levi said, his voice low with an air of authority that made Erwin’s stomach twist, “the night of the ball, when you knelt in front of me?”

Erwin kept his lips pressed against Levi’s skin and paused to reminisce, to remember the way Levi’s mouth had been hot and alcoholic upon his.

“I do,” he breathed against Levi’s skin.

“The entire world will kneel for you,” Levi murmured.

“And you’ll kneel for no one, except for me,” Levi said. “Why is that?

“Why is it,” Levi revised, “that you want to kneel for me?”

Erwin remembered Levi’s boots that evening, remembered the way Levi stared down his cheeks at him, and Erwin’s stomach turned warmly. He bit Levi’s skin, heard the way Levi’s breath caught.

“I need you,” Erwin said after a moment, and then remembered the night after his father’s funeral, remembered the way Levi had fought him, the way Levi had struck him until he had brought him to his knees and let him cry, the way everything that he had kept inside him had poured from him, the catharsis. “I need you,” he said again, exposed this time, and the words fell onto Levi’s neck.

Slowly, Levi turned over and settled once more, facing Erwin, and Erwin withdrew his leg. Levi looked up at him, his eyes dark in the dim room, and then caught Erwin’s hair in one of his hands, pulled Erwin in and kissed him hard on the lips. Levi’s mouth was hot against Erwin’s own and Erwin was wide awake, too awake, aware of every inch of his body, of every nerve that Levi had ignited in his body.

Erwin licked into Levi’s mouth, moving his hand to clutch Levi’s side, to pull him closer until their bodies were flush together. Levi was solid against him, unrelenting, and then pushing, turning Erwin over onto his back. Levi was then on top of him and Erwin arched, hastily pulling Levi’s shirt up his back, feeling over his skin, or perhaps over his scars.

Levi’s teeth caught Erwin’s lip in a sharp bite, stealing Erwin’s breath before Levi withdrew, breaking the kiss, and staring down at Erwin. His hands were planted firmly upon the bed, on either side of Erwin’s head, and his hair hung in front of his face, as he watched Erwin and licked his lips. Erwin reached up, traced the line of Levi’s mouth with his thumb, and Levi nipped. Their breathing was heavy and rough in the air between them.

“Get up,” Levi murmured and sat up. He slipped off of the bed and Erwin followed him closely, immediately, kicking himself free of the sheets. He stood straight in front of Levi, whose shirt had gone askew over his shoulders, dipping low and hugging close to his collar.

Erwin eyed the juncture of Levi’s neck and shoulder and his heart pounded, racking through his body, and Levi slipped his fingers beneath Erwin’s shirt, spread them over his stomach, pushed them up over his ribs. Erwin rolled his shoulders back. Levi then stepped close, tipped his head up, and breathed, his words falling over Erwin’s jaw, “Kneel.”

Erwin did. He slowly sank, watching Levi as he did, and the floor was hard and cold on his knees, through his pants. His breathing picked up and he dropped his gaze, towards Levi’s thighs, his crotch, and knelt, his fingers curling upon his thighs. He shuddered when he felt Levi’s hand move through his hair, slowly, again, again. Then Levi stepped sideways, circled him, as if examining him, and Erwin looked up again, caught Levi’s gaze.

“A king,” Levi said from behind Erwin, from above him, with his voice a thick fog. His warm fingertips slid over Erwin’s neck, cupped around his throat. Erwin, with the back of his head rested against Levi’s hip, peered up at him. “On his knees.”

Erwin swallowed hard, parted his lips, and Levi’s fingers fit firmly over his throat, and Erwin was sure that Levi could feel his pounding pulse. Arousal was thick and hot in Erwin’s abdomen, his cock hard, and he licked his lips. With his free hand, Levi gently pushed Erwin’s bangs from his forehead. He traced the side of Erwin’s face with his fingertips, over his jawbone, his cheek, and to his lips, pushed three of his fingertips past them. Erwin moaned quietly around them, sucked them into his mouth.

“We’ll have to do this again sometime,” Levi murmured, his voice rough. “When I have my gloves on, and when I’m fully dressed.” Erwin pushed his tongue to the pads of Levi’s fingertips and continued to stare up at him. He reached behind him after a moment and curled his fingers in Levi’s sleeping pants. “When I have my boots on.”

Erwin closed his eyes and Levi pushed his fingers deeper into his mouth. Erwin hollowed his cheeks. He felt Levi’s fingers twist, then curl, one at a time, swiping over the insides of his cheeks, his teeth, his tongue.

Levi pulled his fingers from Erwin’s mouth, wiped the saliva over the flush of Erwin’s cheeks. Erwin’s breathing came quicker and he kept his head tipped back against Levi’s hip, Levi’s fingers now stroking slow, leisurely lines over the expanse of his throat. He once more closed his eyes, leaned back into Levi’s body, and he tightened his grip on Levi’s pants.

“I want you,” Erwin breathed, or perhaps he only thought it—the fingers drawing gentle lines over his throat did not stop, and Levi did not react, not for a long while. Erwin’s skin was warm and the rhythm of Levi’s fingers over his throat left him, once more, in a dizzy and half-awake daze, and he leaned more of his weight back into Levi, who was sturdy and unyielding behind him. Slowly, his fingers loosened their hold on Levi’s pants.

Erwin opened his eyes, blinked, once Levi’s fingers stilled upon his skin, the silence now seeming loud and disruptive. He waited, staring up at Levi, unsure if he was allowed to breathe in the stillness, and he couldn’t see Levi’s eyes, not with the way the moon caught his back, but he knew that Levi was staring at him, watching him, measuring him.

Levi stepped around him again, and stood still. Erwin leaned in after a moment, pressed his nose to the crotch of Levi’s pants, and shuddered. Levi then hooked his index finger beneath Erwin’s chin, and drew him up, standing again. Then Levi curled his fingers tight in the collar of Erwin’s shirt, jerked him down, and kissed him again, hard, breathlessly, and he pulled Erwin’s shirt up, only breaking the kiss to pull it off.

The way Levi handled him, without care, made Erwin’s knees weak, made his blood roar hot in his veins. He shuddered, the room feeling cold around them and he drew Levi’s jaw into both of his hands, keeping Levi close as he kissed him, and Levi’s fingers ran over his chest, down his stomach. Then Levi pushed him back, onto the bed once more, and he fell, the breath leaving his body as he did. He reached out and took hold of Levi’s night shirt, pulling Levi on top of him with a grunt.

Levi’s shirt came off easily, its collar wide, and Erwin discarded it at the foot of the bed, on top of the pile of sheets. Levi straddled Erwin’s hips, pressed his knees in close, and they paused, both of them stilled, Erwin on his back and Levi kneeling above him. The dim light of the night fell over Levi’s body, spilt over him and painted him pale, and Erwin looked over the taut lines of his body. Scars ran like rivers along Levi’s muscles, down his chest and stomach, and bruises colored dark blemishes over his skin; he looked a map, and Erwin reached up, tentatively, touched his fingertips to Levi’s abdomen.

“Fuck,” he breathed, and followed the rivers up Levi’s body, to his collar, then he looked at Levi’s face. Levi rolled his shoulders back, exhaled a quiet breath through his red lips.

Erwin took hold of his sides and pulled him down again. The bed bounced beneath them when Levi’s hands hit the mattress, again on either side of Erwin, and this time Erwin buried his face in Levi’s neck, kissing and mouthing his throat. In his ear, he felt Levi’s breathing pick up, falling in huffs on his earlobe, and he moved his hands up and down Levi’s sides. Levi arched, pressed their stomachs together, and Erwin cursed again, Levi’s skin feverish against his own and he wrapped his arms around his knight, dug his nails into his shoulder blades. Levi growled and bit Erwin’s ear. Erwin gasped in the curve of Levi’s neck and shoulder.

Levi moved his hands, gripping Erwin’s shoulder tight with one, pinning him to the bed, and moving the other down Erwin’s body, slow and striking him like a match, igniting his skin in the wake of his fingers, until Levi’s hand found the hem of Erwin’s pants and pulled them down. Erwin bit Levi’s neck, felt him groan above him, and he wanted to mark Levi’s skin, to leave his own bruise, because Levi was his knight. Levi was the best there was, the most dangerous there was, and he was all Erwin’s.

Erwin spread his fingers wide over Levi’s shoulder then traced the slope of Levi’s spine with them, down, down, until they slipped beneath Levi’s pants as well, over his ass. He felt Levi’s body jerk above him and Erwin shuddered, bent one knee, bucked up towards Levi—a motion that caused Levi’s hand to tighten on his shoulder, that caused Levi to push more of his weight into Erwin’s body to hold him down. Erwin pushed Levi’s pants down his hips and Levi bit Erwin’s ear once, hard, before he rolled off of him, kicking his pants all the way off as he did so.

Erwin sat up as well, trembling as he did, and removed the rest of his clothing. His skin was flushed from his face to his chest, his heart a drum inside him, and he, once more, paused, looking over the lines of Levi’s body, the curve of his thighs, the angle of his knees, the slopes of his calves, the way he looked small and put together. Levi looked him over, too, briefly, before he reached out and felt over Erwin’s chest, his fingertips brushing over one of Erwin’s nipples and making Erwin shudder.

Then Levi leaned in, spread his fingers up and over Erwin’s throat, coaxing Erwin to tip his head back. Erwin exhaled a breath into the warming air around them, closed his eyes, and heard Levi whisper like gravel in his ear.

“Fuck me.”

Erwin groaned into the still room.

Levi settled his back against Erwin’s head board as Erwin went to his closet, opened his drawered chest, and withdrew a glass bottle of bath oil from one of his clothing drawers. He then turned and paused, lingering near the doors of his closet, and looking Levi over, Levi in the white of the moonlight and on the white and grays of his sheets, Levi, panting quietly and naked in his quarters. The sight felt not of this world to Erwin, felt almost sacred and something that he did not deserve to look at. He blinked, saw Levi behind his eyes, black and white and red all over, and then, with the glass bottle in hand, he climbed back onto the bed.

Levi bent his legs for Erwin and he stared as Erwin poured the substance over his fingers dripping some onto the sheets, and stared even as Erwin slipped a finger into him. Erwin heard Levi’s breath catch, a quiet hitch, and Erwin hardly dared to breathe himself, moving his finger deep and slowly inside Levi, and he watched the pink rise to Levi’s cheeks. He fingered Levi, slowly at first, then quicker when Levi groaned and shifted impatiently, and by the time he had three of his fingers inside Levi, Levi’s lips had parted, heavy breaths escaping them, his cheeks flushed dark, the line of his shoulder going lax against the wooden headboard.

Oil was still thick and wet in his palm when Erwin withdrew his fingers, watching as a shudder vibrated through Levi’s body. He wrapped his fingers around his own cock, lathered himself with the leftover oil, and when he pushed into Levi, Levi took hold of his shoulders and dug his nails in.

Erwin hooked his hands beneath Levi’s knees, lifted Levi’s legs and sat his ankles upon his shoulders. He fitted himself inside Levi and turned his head, kissing and mouthing Levi’s ankle, his fingers shaking as he ran them over Levi’s calf, over his top of his foot, the arch of his heel, and then back over his calf, and he heard Levi breathe his name soft, like a confession.

Sweat beaded over Erwin’s hot skin, sticking to him, and he moved his hips, first in short motions, and a sound, long and breathless, poured from Levi’s mouth, pooled hot and thick in Erwin’s stomach. Erwin parted his lips and began to pant against Levi’s calf, and he closed his eyes tightly, his head spinning and thoughtless behind his eyelids. He wrapped his fingers around Levi’s ankle and held him tight, his other hand moving up and down the outside of Levi’s thigh.

Erwin moaned across Levi’s skin and mouthed, kissed, licked, worshipped Levi’s calf, his ankle, and he drew out the motion of his hips, pounding into Levi with longer thrusts that coaxed short, loud sounds from Levi’s mouth. When he opened his eyes, he saw that Levi had clamped his hand over his mouth, and Erwin stared. Levi’s brow was furrowed, heavy breaths escaping his nose, and Erwin leaned in, bending Levi further in half. They both groaned as Erwin’s cock moved deeper inside Levi.

Levi pulled his hand from his mouth and reached out abruptly, curled his fingers tight around Erwin’s jaw, and he jerked Erwin in to kiss him again. The kiss was sloppy and wet and Erwin curled his fingers tight around Levi’s thighs, his toes curling against the mattress as he fucked into Levi, and someone cursed into the kiss—Erwin couldn’t be sure of who.

Levi’s fingers pressed firmly into his jaw, distracting and demanding and grounding him, keeping him from floating away, keeping him focused on what he was doing, on who he was with, on the way Levi’s body was hot and damp and close, and Erwin moved one hand to Levi’s chest. Everything of the moment was Levi, everything was the sounds that slipped from Levi’s mouth and into his own, the way Levi’s body trembled and rocked with his thrusts, the way Levi held onto him, everything was Levi and Erwin moaned a hoarse sound into Levi’s lips.

He wrapped his fingers around Levi’s cock, felt the breathing stop in Levi’s lips, and he stroked Levi quickly. Erwin felt as if they were burning, as if they had ignited and set fire to themselves, to the bed beneath them, and he had never felt more alive, more aware of himself. Levi didn’t relent his hold on Erwin’s jaw, even as they came, Levi first, spilling hot onto Erwin’s hand and over his stomach, and Erwin second, into Levi with a gasp and the bow of his spine.

They fell like ash onto the bed, side by side, in pieces, and breathing was difficult for Erwin. The air was cooling around them and he shuddered, feeling as if he could finally sleep, and he exhaled a slow, deep breath in an attempt to calm himself. Beside him, Levi did the same before he sat up, eyed the dirty sheets distastefully, though there was nothing to be done about them now. He slid off of the bed and Erwin sat up to watch him, as if afraid that Levi would leave, but Levi returned with a cloth.

They did sleep that night, their heads at the foot of the bed, their legs entwined, and Levi’s hand curled loosely around Erwin’s throat. Their swords remained at the bedside.

 

 

Erwin sat at the head of the long table, where his father used to. His folded hands rested upon the table and he stared down its length, eyed the councilmembers, who sat straight in their chairs, watching him from the corners of their beady eyes, with a distaste to which Erwin had developed immunity long ago. Levi sat to his right, stiff in his own chair.

It had been nearly a year since the council had murdered Erwin’s father. Erwin tilted his head, showing them the bruises that Levi had marked into the side of his throat. “Proceed,” he prompted quietly.

“The second riot this week occurred yesterday,” a councilman from the middle of the table spoke, the one who used to sit across from Erwin. He cleared his throat and continued, “Citizens have attacked our guards, resulting in violent and necessary measures.”

“What sort of measures?” Erwin’s knuckles had whitened upon the table.

Nearly a year, and none of them had made an attempt on his life, none of them had suggested that he lead them to war.

“Measures to restrain the assailants,” the councilman said. “Their trials are being held later next week; the council and I believe that life imprisonment, if not execution, would be the most just punishment. Attacking any member under the royal guard is, after all, a crime of treason.”

“It is,” Erwin agreed quietly. He felt Levi’s eyes upon him, watching him, but he didn’t look away from his council.

Nearly a year, and still no concrete evidence that the battle with Trost had been an assassination.

“Postpone the trials,” Erwin said and the room tensed. The councilman bristled, the line of his jaw tightened. “I believe we have more pressing matters to deal with.”

“Such as?”

“Our relations with Rose. More specifically, Trost.” Erwin paused, looking down the line of councilmen once more. He lifted his hands, set his lips upon his laced fingers, and smoked them out, “It seems odd to me that they have yet to make another attempt on our land since our battle nearly a year ago. They did, after all, kill our king. That would seem to me to be the perfect time to strike a country.

“Or perhaps,” Erwin continued quietly, the councilmen rigid in their seats, “they’ve postponed their attacks for fear of Yalkell? Yalkell did not suffer the losses that we did.”

“Trost may have succeeded in taking our king,” a different councilman spoke, the oldest councilman, the one who sat directly to Erwin’s left, and directly across the table from Levi, “but it cost them dearly. As far as numbers are concerned, they suffered far more than we did. I would assume they’re taking the time to rebuild their army, but it’s only a matter of time before they attack again. You know as well as we do that our relations, as you put it, with Trost, are dangerous.”

“And are we ready if they attack again?” Erwin pressed, unblinking as he stared at the councilman.

There was a pause, a loaded and cocked silence.

“Yes,” the councilman replied quietly after a moment, his voice thin, and Levi shifted in his seat.

 

 

“My brother survived,” Hange said, the morning after the funeral for Erwin’s father. They stood close to Erwin as he held the underside of Beauty’s muzzle and combed a brush through her mane, close and quiet, though the nearest guards were far away, hovering near the entrance to the stables. Beside them, Levi fed Thatcher. “When he returned, I thought for a second that maybe we were wrong. That maybe there were no traitors in the council.”

Erwin shifted his weight and cringed. He had woke that morning and seen that two, dark bruises had blossomed over his thighs. Levi had been kind enough to change the bandages on his leg and his back.

Beauty scoffed quietly and Erwin cooed.

“And my brother said that your father was killed by Trost’s soldiers. So either we were wrong, or this conspiracy has stretched further than we previously thought.” Erwin looked at Hange sideways. Today, because they had ridden in on horseback, alone, they wore riding pants and boots, and a white button-down. A scarf wound loosely around their throat.

“I don’t know, Erwin, maybe we are wrong,” they said, quietly, their voice nearly inaudible.

“Maybe the council made a mistake,” Erwin returned, just as quietly, and moved his free hand to stroke Beauty’s nose.

“Maybe,” Hange agreed. “I’m just afraid of looking for something that isn’t there. If we’re wrong, it could destroy our countries. There isn’t yet any evidence that suggests treason, but there isn’t exactly evidence that disproves it, either.” Hange then paused, as if collecting their self, organizing their thoughts, and Erwin watched them, his hands stilling over Beauty. “We’ll have to wait to see what the council does next. And if we grow impatient, then we’ll have to smoke them out.”

“Not until we’re ready,” Erwin murmured and Hange smiled in the corners of their lips.

“Not until we’re ready,” they agreed.

 

 

Erwin and Levi returned to the palace just before dawn, the opium’s effects long gone from their bodies. The air was a thinning violet around them, the cool, promise of the sun’s rise laced in the breeze that passed over their faces as they passed the guard and gate into the castle grounds. Neither guard acknowledged their presence and both Erwin and Levi slid from their horses, leading them through the damp grass to the stables. The morning was motionless, silent, nearly peaceful, but the longer they walked, the more Erwin felt a weight in the silence, an impatient and expectant tension. He looked sideways, first at Beauty, who seemed content as she stepped beside him, then at Levi, who looked at him, too.

The soles of their boots left wet prints across the floor of the stable. Erwin lead Beauty to her stall, freed her of her reigns and saddle. Levi did the same with Thatcher, then stroked his muzzle once. Erwin waited patiently for him to finish before he stepped close to Levi, closing the space between them, and took hold of Levi’s jaw.

Levi looked up at him, the soft edges of his face barely caught in the glow of the stable’s lanterns, and Erwin kissed him, long and like he meant it. Levi pushed his fingers back through Erwin’s hair and breathed out into his mouth.

For that moment, the taut silence seemed to relax, and the morning around them became lazy, slow, unimportant, and Levi’s hand fell from Erwin’s scalp and touched his throat. Erwin tilted his head sideways and closed his eyes.

The moment ended as quickly as it had come. In the distance, the bell rang and broke the quiet morning, instead bringing it to life with its low, lingering echoes, one after the other, each insisting that something was happening, something was happening, something was happening.

Erwin broke the kiss, his stomach tied tight and his heart leaping to his throat, and he knew that their time was up, that they were done waiting.

His eyes caught Levi’s, in a passing second, and he contemplated hiding in the shelter of the stable, contemplated resaddling Beauty and Thatcher and running, contemplated standing still because perhaps, if he didn’t move, the world wouldn’t notice him, the world would have mercy and let him stay here forever.

But the world was his to take. And he and Levi ran from the table, charged into the shattered morning, the bell’s sounds louder now, more insistent, and the guards were running from the gates and into the castle. Erwin and Levi followed and only when they were inside the foyer, standing upon the red rug and standing among the council members and guards, all of whom looked wide awake, as if they hadn’t been sleeping, did they find out what was happening: Trost was here, near the castle walls.

“What?” Erwin snapped. “They couldn’t have gotten so close without passing the town; how did no one see them? How did we manage to catch them at the southern planes, but now we let them get so close?”

Erwin knew the reason, but he wanted, more than anything in the world for someone to say it, for someone to say that this was planned, that someone had let Trost through, that this was his own assassination attempt.

“Trost’s troops were last spotted to the west of town,” the eldest councilman said, urgency high in his voice, “moving this way; our own soldiers should be ready any moment, and they should beat them here. Yalkell has been notified. We may be able to hold Trost off before they can charge the castle, but we can’t rely on that; we need to disperse our troops, keep them staggered—”

Outside, the bell continued to ring, counting the seconds, one, two.

Erwin drew his sword, then, and the commotion of the hall stopped. He lifted the tip of his blade towards the eldest councilman, who seemed unmoved by the motion, and he hissed through his teeth, “How did they get so close?”

“I don’t know,” the councilman breathed, watching Erwin with the judgment that he had watched him with his entire life. The other councilmembers and guards were left breathless around them, stiff and waiting, watching, always watching.

Always watching, to see just what he would do next.

Three, four.

The metal of Levi’s sword scraped against its sheathe when Levi withdrew his own sword, when he stepped closer to the councilman, malice bright in his dark eyes, and breathed, “Bull shit, you fucking pig.” Erwin saw fear pass through the councilman’s eyes when he looked at Levi, when Levi stood close and lifted the edge of his blade to his throat. Levi’s sword touched Erwin’s with a quiet sound.

Then, one by one, the guards drew their swords as well, surrounded them, and Erwin bent his knees, his jaw tense. The blood in his head was like oceans, rushing and pushing against his skull, his eyes passing over the guards, every single one that he had known his entire life. They now lifted their swords to him.

Three, four. One, two, three.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say,” the councilman said, his shoulders straight.

“Did you lead my parents into war to kill them?” Erwin breathed, and once more looked at the councilman. He tilted his sword down, the very tip of his blade now resting near the man’s collar.

Two.

“I did.”

“And have you brought Trost here to kill me?”

One.

The councilman grinned wide, showing his teeth, and Erwin had never before seen any of them smile.

His teeth stained pink as Levi’s blade sliced right through his throat.

The bell stopped ringing.

And, like a rushing wave, soldiers, Trost’s and Stohess’, poured into the foyer, through the doors as if they weren’t even there, red with blood and gray with armor and swords. They let the noise and chaos of the morning into the castle.

 

 

“Normally,” Erwin’s father explained, leading Erwin across the courtyard. The sun poured hot and heavy onto Erwin’s scalp, and Erwin rubbed his damp forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, “a prince receives his own horse when he’s thirteen. It’s been tradition for a prince to adopt his own horse while it’s young and raise it. But I’ve made an exception for you.”

Erwin looked down at his feet when they entered the stable, purposefully stepping on the straws of hay that lay on the floor. He remained silent at his father’s side, following him, not looking up until his father stopped, near the opposite end of the stable. His eyes widened.

They had stopped at the stall that held his mother’s horse.

“Beauty was very young when your mother started riding her,” his father said, reaching out to pet the horse’s white muzzle. “Now that you’re old enough, I think she’d do well under your care.”

Erwin swallowed, waiting for his father to remove his hand before he reached out and gingerly touched Beauty’s nose. He had always thought his mother’s horse was beautiful, the only white horse in their stable. Beauty stared at him, her eyes a deep brown, and she didn’t move when Erwin touched her, so he moved his fingertips up the soft fuzz of her muzzle, up to her mane, then over her ears. She ducked her head and her ears twitched.

“What do you think?” Erwin’s father asked quietly after a moment, as Erwin was running his fingers through her mane.

Erwin nodded, not looking away from Beauty. “I’ll treat her just as mother did,” he said, his throat feeling tight when he spoke.

“I know you will,” Erwin’s father said quietly, touched the top of his head briefly. “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. After all, I think it’s time for her lunch.” With that, he went back the way they came, down the length of the stable, leaving Erwin with his hand between Beauty’s eyes. After a long pause, he leaned forward, pressed his forehead to hers, and she snorted quietly.

 

 

Riots came at several a day; a year and a half since the murder of Erwin’s father, and still nothing had changed. Numerous trials lined up, until Erwin could no longer postpone them; the council reluctantly agreed when he ordered that they reduce the assailants’ sentence to life imprisonment. He oversaw the trials, one after another, sitting high in the balcony of the courtroom. Each and every time the gavel fell upon the council’s, Erwin remembered looking up at his father, Levi shackled beside him, remembered the way his father stared down upon him.

Erwin had been able to save Levi, but he could not save these people, not yet. He could prolong their lives, but he knew that he did not yet have the power to save them indefinitely, so he simply watched, and they watched him, too, with spite and blame, with looks that told him that this was his fault and Erwin did not disagree. Throughout every trial, Levi stood beside the arm of his chair, staying close to him as he watched the civil war set his country ablaze.

Nights were his only salvation. They remained, for the most part, sleepless, but Levi gave him relief, tied him into knots and sent him from his mind, from his body, and brought him back to life every night. Levi destroyed him only to put him back together again, brought him to his knees and tore him apart, blindfolded him, pried his mouth open with his gloved fingers, pushed his boots against Erwin’s lips and crushed him into pieces, until Erwin was no longer sure of anything, until Erwin was content with being no longer sure of anything, and only then, would he build Erwin back up again, and create him anew.

And in one of these nights, Erwin found Levi waiting for him in his quarters, the head of a horse crop pinched between his index finger and thumb.

 

 

Erwin and Levi were swept away.

Their feet followed the tide of soldiers that poured into the grand hall, twisting and turning, striking and dodging, and the noise around Erwin was white, nothing but white, the screams of soldiers and the brash scrape of metal on metal, swords against swords, swords against armor, the wet sounds of metal on skin, the crash of skin onto the floor—the tall walls and ceiling caught it all, held it inside the foyer, and Erwin swam in it. He lost himself in it, lost himself in his rigid breathing and the hot adrenaline rushing through him, keeping him on his toes, keeping him moving, keeping him, most importantly, close to Levi.

They found themselves in the center of one of the stairwells and Erwin realized then that only Trost soldiers had attacked them thus far. His own soldiers fought beside him, fell beside him, their bodies red and crumpled.

The first man that Erwin killed was a Trost soldier, and Erwin’s sword went through his chest, finding the spot on his side, just out of the reach of his breast plate. He hung on Erwin’s sword, his green eyes going instantly vacant, and Erwin withdrew his sword, red and wet, and blood leaked from the soldier’s lips as he fell back, down the staircase, onto the soldiers trying to charge them. Both Erwin and Levi took another couple steps backwards, up the staircase, and fought.

 

 

“Rot in hell,” the assailant yelled from the court room, his words loud and piercing, his hands shackled, and his wide, bright eyes fixed upon Erwin.

Erwin sat still in his chair, and watched as the guards dragged the man away, to his sentence of life imprisonment.

 

 

Exhaustion anchored in Erwin’s bones, familiar and heavy, making him shake as he caught blow after blow, attempt after attempt on his life. His mouth had gone dry long ago—it felt as if they had been fighting for hours, maybe even days, but they had only just reached the top of the staircase, and the morning was still a passive periwinkle.

Levi moved with a swiftness that he never could. Contorting himself around the swords around him, slipping through the cracks in the soldiers’ defenses, and man after man fell to his blade; blood dripped from his sword as he swung it, taking another life. And Erwin moved with him, matching his movements—slower, though just as effective, and he was still alive, they were still alive, fighting, and by this time, their own soldiers had joined their sides.

“Sire,” someone rasped beside him and his blade cut through another soldier’s throat, “we need to get you to safety.”

“No,” Erwin grunted, because he knew his place.

And that was all he heard from that soldier; someone crumpled beside him.

Erwin had lost sight of the councilmen; he had lost sight of everyone, except Levi. Perhaps Yalkell had arrived by now, perhaps there were more Trost soldiers piled outside the castle doors, waiting to get inside, perhaps this was not even happening—it certainly didn’t feel as if he was fighting. His arms and legs tingled, trembled, and all he did was hold onto the idea of fighting, of staying alive, of fighting for his life.

 

 

Levi laid his hand over Erwin’s eyes, his fingers warm, soft, and, when Erwin blinked, his eyelashes tickled Levi’s skin.

And nothing happened, not for a long moment, and Erwin lay still, upon his back, and stared into the darkness of Levi’s palm. His breathing, deep and calm, passed through his lips, the only sound in his quarters.

 

 

His breath caught when he fell against one of the door knobs lining the corridor, its iron fist jabbing into his back. He arched, momentarily crippled, and kicked out when the soldier who shoved him charged. The soldier faltered and Erwin took the opportunity to impale him through the side.

Trost soldiers surrounded them, though Erwin noticed that more of them focused upon Levi, whose cheek ran red with blood not his own, whose shirt had torn down the back and gone crimson—yes, his own.

He realized then, as soldiers dropped, that they were cornered against the wall.

 

 

“You’re kind of dense,” Levi finally murmured, his voice soft and blended into the silence around them. His hand remained across Erwin’s eyes.

Erwin licked his dry lips. “Why is that?”

“Because I’ve tried to kill you, and you let me to do this to you,” Levi said, without bite.

“You’ve never tried to kill me,” Erwin breathed. “If you had tried to kill me, I would be dead by now.”

“But I’ve told you that I will.” Levi’s voice felt closer, all around him, and his words fell in soft puffs of breath over Erwin’s lips. “I told you: first the council, then the king, then you. And still you let me restrain you and do all of these things to you. I could kill you.”

Erwin exhaled slowly. His hands curled at his sides, warm with the desire to reach up and touch his knight, but they stayed still, as per Levi’s instructions before he had laid down. “You could,” he agreed quietly. “But I trust you.”

 

 

Why did he remember this now?

 

 

Beside him, Levi grunted, panted, snarled, as he moved—or perhaps that was Erwin himself. The Trost soldiers that had cornered them fell, but before they could take advantage, they were replaced. Levi’s sword went through a soldier’s gut and, with his free hand, Levi took hold of another’s collar and bashed his head against the wall.

Air was thick and rough in Erwin’s lungs as he breathed; he caught a sword intended for Levi’s back.

 

 

Then again, nothing for a moment.

 

 

It happened all too quickly; Erwin couldn’t be sure of who did it, couldn’t be sure of how it was done.

But Levi stopped moving. He stiffened, his sword caught in a man’s shoulder, and the side of his shirt blossomed a bright, bright scarlet.

And before he crumpled, he caught Erwin’s gaze, from the corner of his eye, his eyes dark and tired. Blood seeped thick from his mouth and he groaned a stunted sound.

The noise around them hushed, and Levi’s eyes rolled into his head.

He fell.

 

 

Erwin shuddered when Levi’s lips fit into his own. His hands curled into tight fists at his sides.

 

 

The instant Levi’s knees knocked against the hard floor, the weight in Erwin’s bones lifted. He took the hilt of his sword into both hands and launched himself towards the soldiers around him, relentless, and his sword went through their sides, their throats, their thighs. He moved with a speed that he never had before, his eyes bright and his teeth bared as he tore them apart, and he felt himself burning from the inside out as he did, his chest tight and hot, his veins igniting beneath his skin and the fire filled him until there was no longer room inside him, not even for himself.

Soldier by soldier fell, and gaps opened, leaving openings for Erwin, but he didn’t take them, didn’t move away from Levi’s side, because he was fighting, and Levi was the one who would keep him alive, Levi was the one who would save him. Blood ran down the length of his sword, down to its hilt and over his fingers, his wrists.

His boots fell with a wet slosh into the small puddle of blood that had begun to pool beside Levi.

A sword went right through his right bicep, cutting through his jacket and shirt and skin, and the world, once more, fell back into Erwin’s bones. He groaned, closed his eyes tightly, and the feeling left his right hand; his sword fell loudly to the floor, shattering the static of noise around him. He fell to the floor, beside Levi.

Levi’s open lips were so, so close to his knee and, for some reason, his eyes burned.

 

 

It was weeks after Levi’s trial before Erwin could really sleep at night. He would instead lay in bed, his eyes closed, his mind drifting, but never too far, just in case Levi were to wake him, or sneak from bed.

One of these nights, Erwin dared to sit up in bed. Carefully, he pushed himself up, leaned his shoulders back against his wooden headboard, and he watched Levi in the grays of his room. Levi, laying upon his side, had turned towards Erwin in the night. His face—his nose, his cheeks, his lips—lay in the distant glow of the moonlight from outside and Erwin tilted his head, his index finger moving against the bed sheets, tracing the shape of Levi’s nose, the curve of his cheeks, the slope of his lips. He then held his breath, and heard nothing, not Levi’s breathing—perhaps Levi was awake, too.

Levi’s hair fanned in dark strands across his forehead, over his brow, reaching towards the red sheets beneath him. His eyelashes looked much the same over his cheekbones. The more Erwin stared at him, the more he looked disconnected from the room, as if he wasn’t really there—he was far too still, far too quiet, to be real, and Erwin nearly convinced himself that he could reach out, try to touch Levi’s cheek, and he would feel nothing. That his fingers would slip right through Levi’s skin and touch the mattress.

But then Levi stirred, lifted his head with a quiet grunt, and stretched out. He rolled over, away from Erwin, and curled up again before he settled. Now the moonlight focused upon the back of his neck, the top notch of his spine, beneath which the collar of his night shirt dipped. Now Erwin saw it—the slow and lazy rise and fall of Levi’s shoulders with his breathing.

Levi was real, very real and, in moments like these, very unlike the Levi that Erwin had first committed to memory: the Levi with red eyes and bared teeth.

 

 

The drinks of the night continued to swim, warm and thick through Erwin’s veins. He felt them under his skin, felt the memory of Levi’s lips upon his own over his skin, just as thick and just as warm, but he kept himself tall, focused, as he approached his father’s quarters. Surely the commotion of the pre-war ball had ended by now.

Indeed, he did find his father alone and awake in his quarters, at the opposite end of the castle from Erwin’s. His father was sitting at his desk, hunched over a piece of parchment on which he wrote, the pen in his hand moving in quick and jagged movements. He had spoken when Erwin knocked, permitting him to enter, but he didn’t look up to acknowledge Erwin and Erwin noticed then, in the dim lantern light upon his desk, how gray his blond hair had become.

Erwin waited patiently for him to finish, glancing around the expanse of his father’s room, over the extravagant wood work of his furniture, over the large paintings that hung upon his walls, then at the painting of his wife, Erwin’s mother, framed and sitting silently upon the table beside his bed. Erwin felt his throat closing and swallowed.

“What is it, Erwin?” the king finally asked, his voice quiet and tired. Erwin looked at him again, and he had lifted his head to stare at Erwin in return, his glasses low on his nose.

Erwin glanced behind him to make sure he had closed the door. He then stepped forward, further into his father’s quarters, and his boot fell upon the intricate rug that stretched the expanse of the floor. “Why are you doing this?” Erwin asked after a long pause, his voice quiet, as if telling a secret.

His father didn’t bother asking to what he was referring. He instead paused and watched Erwin, silent for a moment, before he sat back in his chair, laid the pen carefully over the parchment. “Because my soldiers need me,” the king murmured. “My place is beside them.”

“They’ll kill you,” Erwin continued softly, the urgency of his tone disconnected from that of his words. “This war is all an attempt to kill you, surely you know that.”

Another moment. “I have suspected treason among my council ever since your mother died ,” he said. “But there has never been any evidence to prove it. And as long as the council holds power over most political and military matters, there’s not much to be done without proof.”

“So you’re going to give up?” Erwin pressed quietly.

The king raised an eyebrow. “No,” he said. “I’m going to fight. I’m going to fight alongside my men. They’re going to war whether I do or not—”

“This war,” Erwin interjected, his heart swelling in his throat, frustration rising in his blood, “is all a ruse to kill you, there may not be war if you don’t go.”

“If this war is nothing more than a ruse,” the king countered calmly, “then Trost is in on the conspiracy as well, at least to some degree. That would mean my council is working with Trost and, if I do not go, there will be one less person to stand between them and their goal. Why do you think they’re doing this, Erwin?”

“Power,” Erwin said immediately.

“Power,” his father agreed. “The people in my council want to rule Stohess, and they are working with the people in Trost. If they achieve their goal, there will be nothing stopping them from ruling Stohess and Trost. And perhaps they’re also working with Yalkell’s council—then there are three countries under their rule. They will be unstoppable.”

Erwin grit his teeth, but said nothing. He knew his father was right, as much as he didn’t want to hear it.

“So I will go, and I will fight,” the king concluded softly, and closed his eyes for a moment. Erwin had never seen him so tired, never seen him so vulnerable. “And if I fall, I will continue to fight, because, even if I fall, you’ll still be there.”

The king opened his eyes once more, stared at Erwin through the lenses of his glasses. “And you will fight,” he murmured.

Erwin nodded. “Yes, sir,” he breathed, though with difficulty.

Then Erwin’s father smiled a contented smile, and nodded in return.

 

 

The purple morning had brightened into a white and blue day. Around him, the noise of screaming and metal and blood had died—now all to be heard was the rattle of shackles, the distant sound of words passed between the Yalkell soldiers and Stohess’. Trost’s forces had, after hours, been overtaken, and the entirety Stohess’ council and royal guard had been incarcerated under charges of treason.

Now, the tourniquet that Hange had tied around his arm had gone red. Blood dripped from his sleeve and gathered in a puddle on the stone floor beside him—Hange had returned when things had calmed, when confirmation spread that Stohess and Yalkell had overtaken Trost, had insisted upon changing it, or seeing to it further, but Erwin had refused. And now, he had lost all feeling in his right arm; perhaps it would need amputation, but he didn’t worry about that, not yet. Instead, he sat in the corridor, with his bleeding arm, with his trembling muscles and his lead bones, and with his knight at his side, curled up and white, sleeping in the pool of his blood.

It hurt to look at him, but Erwin stared. He stared with red eyes, over the soft, dark lines of Levi’s hair, over the shape, curve, slope of his nose, red cheeks, red red lips, over the bend of his neck, the dip of his collar, down his translucent skin until it disappeared beneath his red red red shirt. Levi laid upon his side, motionless in the daylight that stretched across the length of the corridor.

Erwin reached out, touched his arm; it had gone cold, and it felt stiff and tight and dead and horrible beneath Erwin’s fingers, so he instead moved his hand and rested his fingers upon the leather of Levi’s boot.

It hurt, but Erwin stared.

Around them, bodies laid, broken.

“Erwin.”

Erwin hadn’t heard anyone approach. He blinked, his eyes burning, and looked up to find Mike looking down at him. Mike, with blood stained up his arms, with his bangs stuck to his sweaty forehead, with a sword sheathed in his belt, and, like Erwin, without armor. Mike’s knees cracked as he knelt in front of Erwin, glancing only briefly at Levi’s body.

“Erwin, we need you to oversee the imprisonment of your council, and for you to file the sentencing against them.” Mike spoke quietly, calmly, and Erwin found comfort in his voice. “And we should tend to that wound on your arm.”

Erwin nodded. He looked again at Levi, silent and still upon the floor, before he reached out and Mike offered him a hand.

“Will you take him?” Erwin breathed as Mike helped him stand, the first words he had spoken in hours. His voice was rough, distant, and sharp against his throat. He didn’t want anyone else to touch Levi, and he swayed on his feet, his balance askew, and blood ran down his fingertips and trickled onto the floor.

“Of course,” Mike murmured.

And Erwin watched as Mike crouched again, fit his arms beneath Levi’s back and knees, and lifted his small body. Watched as Levi’s legs and arms draped, hung like cloth from Mike’s arms, watched as Levi’s hair slid from his face bloody, his head tipped up towards the ceiling. It hurt, but he stared.

“Hange’s brother was killed as well, by a member of his own council. Hange will oversee the sentencing of Yalkell’s council,” Mike said quietly, and Erwin stared down the corridor, at the lumps of bodies that laid in the light of the sun.

Erwin then crouched with difficulty, wrapped his fingers around the green hilt of Levi’s sword, and sheathed it in his own belt. Before he could stand again, the world tipped beneath him and his head inflated and dark spots peppered his line of sight until they were all he could see.

 

 

Erwin had Levi’s body buried in the back courtyard, hidden in the small clearing in which they so often fought; no one was there to tell him that Levi was to be buried with the other knights, no one was there to tell him that Levi could not be buried with the other knights. Only a handful of people saw Levi’s coffin—dark and rich and heavy and covered in a green cloth embroidered with Erwin’s crest—lowered into the ground, under the light of a mild and breezy afternoon. A handful of people aside from Erwin himself, including Hange, Mike, the soldiers who lowered Levi’s coffin into the ground, and the newest members of his council: Isabel and Farlan.

The leaves of the trees whispered in hushed tones around them and Erwin watched the coffin, watched it until it blended with the dark soil of the yard. He didn’t cry. He didn’t speak. He didn’t do much of anything except watch, watch and think that Levi’s sleepless nights were over, that his own were now infinite.

 

 

“Without exception, execution by hanging,” Erwin had said and the gavel had fallen, its word finite and lingering in the silent courtroom.

And, without exception, every member of the royal guard and royal council was led, with their wrists shackled, onto the wooden platform of the public execution site. They went groups, lined across the scaffold, passed the waiting nooses until they found their own. They looked over the heads of the crowd that had gathered and at Erwin, who watched from the back. He watched from atop Beauty, his eyes dark, his chin tipped up, as the ropes were secured around their necks. Beside him, Hange watched, too, on horseback. The day above them was warm, pleasantly warm, the heat of the sun filtered through the thick clouds that passed through the sky, catching sight of the town as they went.

Then, when they were ready, Erwin raised his left arm—his right still covered in bandages from the raid several days ago—and the platforms dropped with a thunderous crack.

The crowd was silent and bodies hung from the ropes. Like cloth.

The next group stepped up onto the scaffolding, the next group eyed Erwin, their gazes narrow and full of disdain to the end, and the next group hung just like the last. Erwin raised his arm again, again, and again, and it was easy.

Easy, even when his eyes fell upon the guard he recognized from the front door, from that day when he and Levi had sneaked out of the castle to meet Isabel and Farlan—the guard who had hesitated to raise his sword towards Erwin. The guard, his throat caught in the noose, stared at Erwin, his eyes wide, his eyes unlike the guards around him—he had lost hope for salvation.

Easy. Erwin raised his hand and once more fissured the silence of the afternoon.

 

 

Though it was raining, the doorway to the decrepit house on the southern outskirts of town stood open and vacant, just as it had the last time Erwin had visited. Rain pounded across Erwin’s hood as he and Hange approached on horseback—riding with one functioning arm was difficult, Erwin found, and he swayed his body in more exaggerated motions with Beauty’s steps, managing to keep himself balanced. He glanced sideways and saw that Hange was having a similar difficulty with their injured leg.

The first thing that Erwin felt since the raid a couple days ago was the churning of his gut, rolling with a nauseating guilt as he stopped out front of the small house. Beauty grunted when he stopped her, and Hange stopped beside him, their horse trotting a couple steps in place.

Perhaps he should have brought something. He only thought of this now, when he arrived empty handed. He could have brought a gift of some sort, food, or something, but all he had with him was Levi’s sword, sheathed at his side, and he knew himself too selfish to let it go. Hange reached out, ran their fingers over the left arm of his jacket, soothingly, comfortingly. Erwin looked up and they were watching them through the raindrops, their dark hood hanging low on their forehead and shielding the lenses of their glasses. Erwin lifted his hand, touched his wet fingers to theirs, before he dismounted.

Both Farlan and Isabel had noticed his arrival before he reached the doorway. They stood, waiting for him, and stepped aside to allow both him and Hange to enter.

“Where’s Levi?” Isabel breathed, her voice trembling because she already knew the answer.

The second thing that Erwin felt since the raid a couple days ago was the swelling of his throat, tightening and closing until he wasn’t sure he could breathe. Inside the small house, the rain was louder, pounding on the thin roof, on the thinner walls. A glowing fire crackled pleasantly in the corner, in the center of the three pillows.

“Where is Levi?” Isabel pressed when Erwin didn’t answer, her words escaping through her teeth.

Erwin straightened, tried to swallow, and looked between her and Farlan. Farlan stood behind her, his face expressionless and he, too, knew.

“Levi,” Erwin said, and his voice shook, mimicking his fingers at his sides, “in fulfillment of his duty, saved my life when our castle was seized by Trost forces. He fought valiantly, a better soldier than any in the military, and he sacrificed his own life to protect my own—”

The third thing Erwin felt was the blow of Isabel’s knuckles across his jaw, smashing and sharp and dizzying—Erwin’s head snapped sideways with the force. He closed his eyes tightly for only a moment but, when he opened them again, they were wet, blurry and hot.

“Isabel,” Farlan said quietly.

“You fucker,” Isabel hissed, her words now nearly indistinguishable from how badly her voice shook, “you killed him, you took him and you fucking killed him.”

Erwin turned his head again, his jaw throbbing and stiff, and he looked at her as well as he could—he didn’t disagree. Tears ran down her flushed cheeks and she shook as she glared at Erwin like she wished him dead instead. Sometimes, he wasn’t sure he disagreed with that, either. But only sometimes, in his selfish moments, because there was a reason he was still alive, there were things that he had not yet finished, things he had not yet changed.

He blinked until he could better see. Then he slowly dropped to one knee, lifted his left hand to his heart because his right hand was unable, and he lowered his head. He stared at the rotting floorboards beneath his knee and spoke, though it was difficult, “You have my sincerest apologies. And I know you don’t owe me anything—the opposite, in fact—but I would like to invite the both of you to join my royal council.”

In the uncertain silence that followed, Erwin lifted his head, just enough to peer up at both Isabel and Farlan, who stared at him, clearly unsure of what to do. “Things are changing,” he murmured, and then his throat swelled and he couldn’t speak any longer.

 

 

Erwin felt lost in his own bed.

 

 

“I think we should get married,” Hange murmured a year later.

They lay upon the roof of the balcony just outside Hange’s window. The stone was hard beneath Erwin’s back and he pillowed his head with his arm. Hange reached up, spread their fingers wide against the stars above them. “If for no other reason but convenience,” they said and laughed. “Then we’ll both have a full council instead of each having half of a council.”

A year later, and they had just barely begun rebuilding their countries from the ground up. Erwin had asked Mike to lead his council—which now consisted of Farlan, Isabel, and three other members of their recommendation. His guard was considerably smaller than before, now only several promoted members of his military. Only a few of them patrolled the main town and kept watch—though Isabel and Farlan were his main ears and eyes with the people, and they helped him begin to repair his broken country.

“And we’ll be twice as prepared,” Hange said, “just in case we missed any enemies in Trost’s lines.”

“Have you spoken with Trost lately?” Erwin asked quietly.

“Yes,” Hange said with an almost audible grimace. “We’re still not on the most pleasant of terms, but now it’s over the deaths of innocent troops, even though we weren’t the ones who led them here.”

“I think,” they said softly, “they’re struggling, just like we are.”

Erwin turned his head and looked at them sideways. Hange didn’t look at him, instead continued to stare up at their hand and the stars and the depth of the sky, and their hair lay a thick red over their forehead, ears, and pooled around their neck and shoulders. Erwin inhaled slowly, breathed out just as slowly, and lifted his hand, just enough to touch his knuckles to their cheek, pale and sharp in the moonlight.

“Okay,” he murmured and Hange glanced at him, a smile in the corners of their lips, “let’s get married and rule the world.”

Hange laughed.

 

 

The old, crimson bandages laid in a heap upon the floor of Erwin’s room. Erwin spread his legs and watched, perched at the edge of his bed, as Levi, upon his knees, wound the fresh dressings around the wound in his thigh, now a couple days old, but still very fresh with blood.

“You’re going to limp at your coronation tomorrow,” Levi grumbled as he did this, fastening the bandages tight once he finished. His deft fingers brushed, warm and familiar, against Erwin’s thigh. Levi then stood and made a vague motion with his finger. “Turn around, let me see your back.”

Erwin did as he was told. He pulled his bare legs back onto the bed, tucked them beneath him and turned, pulling his night shirt up his back. He stared through the glass of his window, the morning fresh and barely awake outside. The sky was caught somewhere between a light purple, pink, and peach, and Erwin arched when Levi carefully pulled the bandage from the wound on his back. He ducked his head, closed his eyes, wished he could sleep. Levi’s hands disappeared from his back and he waited, in his underwear and his shirt that he had caught over his shoulders.

Then the bed dipped and Levi was close, looming over him. Levi reached around him and began to wind a new bandage around his chest, encircling him, and Erwin lifted his arms to help with the process. He felt Levi’s concentrated breathing over the back of his neck, and he murmured distantly, “Thank you for doing this.”

“I had to,” Levi said near his ear. “You did a shitty job yourself and you won’t go to the infirmary. Does it hurt?”

Erwin smiled. “Not really.”

Levi finished, fastening this bandage as well, and Erwin slowly lowered his arms. He kept his eyes closed, drifting in the stillness of morning, in the quiet familiarity of Levi’s presence, and his breathing deepened when Levi spread his fingers, moved his hand up the muscles of Erwin’s back, then hooked in the hem of his shirt to pull it back into place.

He leaned back, into Levi, as Levi rested his cheek on Erwin’s shoulder and relaxed. With their eyes closed, they both pretended they could sleep, even for a few minutes.

 

 

Levi’s sword lay sheathed at his side, nestled in the dew-stained grass beneath him. Around him, early morning had thinned and seeped through his clothes, chilled and settling over his skin. He stretched, reached up, and his fingertips brushed against the engraving of Levi’s headstone. He kept his eyes closed.


End file.
